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Book __TB D.Xo_ 

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JO ELLEN 



BY ALEXANDER BLACK 


Novels 

The Great Desire 
The Seventh Angel 
Richard Gordon 
Thorney 
Jo Ellen 

Novelettes 
Miss Jerry 

The Girl and the Guardsman 
A Capital Courtship 

Essays 

The Latest Thing 
Modern Daughters 
Miss America 

Historical 

The Story of Ohio 







JO ELLEN 


BY 

ALEXANDER BLACK 

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HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 
NEW YORK AND LONDON 





JO ELLEN 

Copyright, 1923 
By Harper & Brothers 
Printed in the U.S.A. 

First Edition 

3-X 


SEP 25’23 


©C1A759106 



*Vv» V 




TO 

MY DAUGHTER 













CONTENTS 


PART 

ONE 

i-xv. 

The Spouting Devil . 

PAGS 

1 

PART 

TWO 

I-XI. 

Breaking Away . . . 

49 

PART 

THREE 

i-xi. 

The High Place . . 

91 

PART 

FOUR 

I-XII. 

The Bolt. 

133 

PART 

FIVE 

I-XIX. 

Painted Lips . * . 

175 

PART 

SIX 

i-xv. 

The Other High Place 

252 











JO ELLEN 



JO ELLEN 


PART ONE 
The Spouting Devil 

i 

AS for Jo Ellen, if you had been in search of her 
you might have missed her altogether. The 
JL JL. grass had been precocious that year. Where it 
squirmed in the hot wind, and especially where the clover 
and wild carrot spattered the slope, a slender figure was 
easily immersed. 

The girl sprawled with her feet toward the river. She 
had been in the shade of the maple when she flung her¬ 
self backward. Now the sun had crept to her neck. 
Presently it would pry open her eyes. Her bare legs 
glistened in the light. One of them carried a pale red 
scratch running diagonally upward from the ankle. 

Before that she had sat peering at the water and at the 
purple silhouette of the other side. A tugboat and a long 
string of barges had been cutting a line through the 
glittering space. A freight train droned by, showing 
only the roofs of the cars and the high windows of the 
caboose. The tracks would blister your feet if you had 
your shoes off. If you were further down the hill you 
could see the tracks shining like slits of river. Prob¬ 
ably the telegraph wires were just as hot. It was a 
wonder the sparrows could stand on them as they did. 

l 


2 


JO ELLEN 


The shadow of the Palisades looked cool. Very likely 
it wasn’t. When you got anywhere it only proved to be 
hot in another way. Even the water seemed to simmer. 
But the river was cool. It would be a great day to fall in. 

Thought of falling in brought about a glance at the 
slip of a dress she wore and a meditative movement of 
one hand. The fingers advanced to a torn place in the 
hem, then reviewed the line of the scratch on the leg. 
Experimental wriggling of her toes resulted in the de¬ 
tachment of one canvas slipper. She pushed the slipper 
through the grass with her pink heel, stared again at the 
Palisades and pulled off her cap, the cap with the long 
peak which she liked to wear in the sun. 

Hair was a nuisance in such weather. She plunged 
a hand into the mess of its coils. Sticky. If only it 
could be cropped—not merely bobbed, but cropped 
close like a boy’s. Shingled. A lot of red hair could be 
sold to somebody. You could buy something with the 
money. 

When she tweaked the knot the mass leapt like a 
flame. Her shoulders winced at the hot tickle of it. 
In an airplane the whole thing would stand straight out. 
On some days it would be blown gorgeously if you stood 
on the very top of the Palisades, facing that other way, 
where you could jump off into the world. . . . 

She dropped backward and the grass seemed to flow 
over her without dimming the ruddy flash. Against this 
daub of color the warm whiteness of her face and neck 
showed sharply. She looked into the leaves overhead 
with wide, clear eyes. The glint of green and mauve 
between the lashes might have been borrowed from the 
setting or might have belonged to them. When the lids 
came down, the lash lines were deeply curved. There 
was a moist glow in the hollow at her throat and in 
the prophecy of the breasts that rose and fell in a steady, 
participating tranquillity. 


THE SPOUTING DEVIL 


3 


ii 

Emma Traub, a bony, long-limbed woman, with a 
scuttling stride that never appeared to be affected by 
footway or weather, turned out of the lower road. She 
was whistling a wheezy note and folding the ends of a 
newspaper that wrapped a bundle she carried under an 
arm. Her wiry brown hair glistened at her temples. 
Having subdued the paper, she drew the back of her 
hand under her chin and glanced at the wet knuckles 
without losing the pucker of her lips. She rubbed the 
knuckles over her skirt at the hip and swung up the slope. 
When there was need to dodge an obstacle, she showed 
an extraordinary nimbleness. Something lankly girlish 
appeared in her movements. 

It was a bare foot that caught her glance. . . . When 
she saw that it was Jo Ellen Rewer, she halted and faced 
the figure in the grass without suspending the breathy 
tune or seeming definitely to focus her look. Casually 
she noticed the detached slipper, the hat, the hair gleam¬ 
ing through the green, the creeping intensity of the sun. 
She became rather intent at last in watching the girl’s 
bosom rise and fall. The interest of this seemed to 
grow upon her. She ceased whistling and her inky eyes 
acquired a look of being fascinated, or of being held by 
some extraordinary thought. Now that she had ceased 
whistling, her lips had a loose plainness. They hung 
apart while she stood there, as still as one of the trees, 
staring at the sun-tinted throat and shoulders of the 
lithe young body, at the one spot in the sultry scene 
that moved. It was as if here the hillside breathed; and it 
was as if the hill woke up when Jo Ellen’s eyes opened wide. 

Emma Traub blinked. 

“Your uncle’s home,” she said. 

Jo Ellen yawned, gathered herself into the shade, and 
began fussing with her hair. 


4 


JO ELLEN 


“What of it?” 

“Sick,” said Emma Traub. 

Jo Ellen’s brows gave a perplexed twitch. “Sick?” 

“He looks bad,” added Emma Traub. Thereafter 
she resumed her swinging stride. Over a shoulder she 
saw the girl flying like a blown leaf across the wedge 
of field, leaping. . . . There was some animal that 
leapt like that. Emma Traub always said that no¬ 
body between Tubby Hook and the Harlem could 
run so fast as Jo Ellen Hewer. 

hi 

Ben Bogert, lying abed in broad daylight, looked 
fantastic. His big head had the effect of being magnified. 
There was something of astonishment mixed with the 
knocked-down expression of his face. 

“A damned shame,” he muttered to his sister, Joseph¬ 
ine Rewer. “Couldn’t hold myself up.” 

“You’ll be all right,” said Mrs. Rewer from the closet 
where she was hanging the man’s trousers. 

“Said to Oesterberg, ‘I don’t know what’s the matter 
with me.’ ‘Maybe a sunstroke,’ he says. ‘You’re 
crazy,’ I told him. ‘Heat never bothered me in my life. 
I can stand any amount of it.’ ‘You ain’t a young man 
any longer, Bogert,’ he says. ‘Uncle to big children.’ 
‘Big children?’ I told him. ‘What’s that got to do 
with it? Nothing at all.’ You’d think I was an old 
man. ‘Well, it’s something, ain’t it?’ he says. ‘You 
ought to-” 

“You better be quiet,” said Mrs. Rewer, wavering at 
the door. “The doctor’ll be here. He’ll say what it is.” 

“You’d think I was an old man,” persisted Rewer. 
“That fool Oesterberg-” 

There was a footstep in the outer room. 

“I thought it was Morris,” said Mrs. Rewer to Jo 




THE SPOUTING DEVIL 


5 


Ellen. “Of course I couldn’t find Billy, and sent Morris 
for the doctor. Your uncle isn’t feeling well.” 

Jo Ellen was about to dash into the bedroom. 

“Lord’s sake!” cried Mrs. Rewer. “Why don’t you 
wear your stockings like a civilized human being? You 
look like a tenement house.” 

“Like a house?” Jo Ellen found a place for her cap on 
the rack near the door. 

“You know well enough what I mean. I’m ashamed.” 

“O Ma! it’s summer. Nobody wears anything in 
summer. Who’s to see me?” 

“7 see you.” 

“But you don’t count, Ma!” Jo Ellen patted her 
mother’s tanned cheek, and made a leap toward the 
bedroom. 

“You’re dripping,” remarked Mrs. Rewer, as her 
daughter receded. 

IV 

Ben Bogert had typhoid fever. In his delirium he 
repeated an endless story about a chicken incubator, a 
new and invincible kind. The story was made par¬ 
ticularly pitiful by the fact of the repeated failures follow¬ 
ing a chicken mania that came upon him two years be¬ 
fore. He used to rush home from the office to putter 
with the trays. He was always turning the eggs. Mrs. 
Rewer insisted that he turned the life out of them. But 
the incubator story was not the worst thing. The worst 
thing was the endless song. He roared “The Girl I Left 
Behind Me” whenever he was diverted from the incu¬ 
bator. In the middle of the night the raucous wail of 
his baritone, sliding into various keys and cracking at 
the joints, arose fearfully. They could hear it over at the 
S. P. C. C. It boomed with a weird, hysterical persist¬ 
ence into far recesses of Inwood Hill. Old Lot Mallin, 
huddled at the doorway of her shack, declared that it 
was the noisiest typhoid she ever heard. 


6 


JO ELLEN 


In his most unmanageable moments Bogert could be 
subdued by Jo Ellen. If he bellowed, “Where’s that 
red head?” and Jo Ellen slipped into the room, there 
was silence. He did not look at her. He knew when 
she was there, and would lie with glittering eyes peering 
straight at the ceiling. At such times his face seemed 
quite amazing. With the growth of sandy stubble on 
his chin and the tufty wriggling eyebrows, there was a 
ferocity about him that filled Jo Ellen with awe. She 
suffered acutely while she sat there, doing nothing 
but watch him. 

She had but a vague memory of the time when her 
father died, but the coming of Uncle Ben, though it w r as 
less than a year afterward, remained a vivid matter. 
Uncle Ben’s noisy bigness, the mystery of his relation to 
bathtubs somewhere on Seventh Avenue, his ingenuity in 
building things like hill steps—there were two long 
flights leading to the house porch—the thrilling stories 
of wdien he had been in Idaho, and his passionate interest 
in baseball, stood out strongly. There was a clearing 
near the house where you batted a little up hill, with a 
blighted elm for second base. Jo Ellen’s mother could 
bat better than anyone except Uncle Ben and Morris 
Meyer. There was a tradition that if Jo Ellen ever hit 
the ball she made a home run. “ She just streaks around,” 
said Uncle Ben. Jo Ellen’s proposal to do the running 
for her mother was never accepted. “There’d be nothing 
to it,” declared the biggest player after his shout of 
derision. “You get me rattled enough as it is.” Mrs. 
Rewer remarked that her daughter’s suggestion was a 
piece of impudence. “I’ll do my own running,” she 
said. In the course of a game there was likely to be 
vigorous controversy between Ben Bogert and his 
sister. When Bogert shouted, “I tell you that’s a 
strike! Used to be just a foul when you were young. 
Now it’s a strike—a strike 7” Jo Ellen’s mother would 
retort “O piffle! You make me tired with that new r 


THE SPOUTING DEVIL 


7 


rule talk. I guess I know what a strike is. Play ball!” 
At the bat Bogert was tremendous. The fearful violence 
of his swing predisposed the enemy to let him have his 
run. Moreover, the run was worth seeing. Panting 
in the grass thereafter, he would manage to roar, “Home 
run Bogert!” . . . 

Whenever Dr. Parker appeared, Bogert, with a jerk 
of his big head, exclaimed, “Well, Doc, what can I do 
for you?” He had known a doctor in Boise City who 
looked like Parker. He announced this each time Parker 
appeared. “And he was a hell of a good doctor,” 
ejaculated Bogert, on one or two occasions in little 
better than a whisper. 

“A trifle too energetic for his own good,” was the 
doctor’s way of putting it. “He’ll wear you all out.” 
Parker was speaking here of Mrs. Rewer, Jo Ellen and 
Mrs. Kling, who used to be a nurse, and came over from 
Dyckman Street for many of the night vigils. 

On the day when Dr. Parker appeared twice, Jo Ellen 
noticed that her mother, as well as the man caller from 
her uncle’s office, looked very gloomy. Mrs. Kling, 
arriving after dark, shivered when she heard “The Girl 
I Left Behind Me,” and glanced toward Jo Ellen’s 
mother with a special grimace. 

“Very likely,” said Jo Ellen to herself, “this is the 
night when Uncle Ben is supposed to die. But I don’t 
believe he will. ” She felt like staying up to watch him 
live, but crawled at last into her bed. In the morning she 
was awakened by “The Girl I Left Behind Me.” As it 
turned out, that was the last day on which he sang the 
dreadful thing. The incubator lasted almost a week longer. 

In his convalescence Bogert was, if possible, more 
difficult than during the acute stage of his fever. He 
was not irritable. He was simply inexhaustible. De¬ 
prived of the privilege of doing anything himself, he 
was fertile in devices for the activity of others. Only 
Jo Ellen ventured flatly to oppose him. 


8 


JO ELLEN 


“You’re not sick now,” she said, “and I don’t have 
to perform any more.” 

Bogert groaned. “Think of that from my favorite 
niece!” 

“Your only niece,” corrected Jo Ellen. 

“Which is worse yet.” When it pleased him to do 
so, Bogert overlooked his fatherly relation. 

“You know,” said Jo Ellen. 5 “You’ve been a fright* 
ful trouble.” 

“The idea!” exclaimed her mother. “What do you 
think you’re saying? ” 

“And who does she think she’s saying it to?” cried 
Bogert. 

“It’s true,” claimed Jo Ellen. 

“That’s just what it isn't,” Uncle Ben protested. 
“I was no trouble at all. Quite the other way. Why, 
Mrs. Kling told me only yesterday that I had been a 
real entertainment. I think that was it—a real enter¬ 
tainment. I suppose she w^as thinking of the day I 
sang, ‘The Girl I Left Behind Me.’” 

“The day?” Jo Ellen hugged her laugh. “The 
day? You sang it for nine days—all the time. If you 
ever sing it again I’ll leave home.” 

“You can’t,” said Uncle Ben. “Not at sixteen. Not 
for a year, anyway. Your mother”—this with a volu¬ 
minous wink—“will tell you that.” 

“Ben!” Mrs. Rewer stood over her burly brother, 
huddled at the top of the steps he had built. “You 
must be getting pretty well. But it wouldn’t hurt 
you to show some sense. ” 

“You always said I hadn’t any,” Bogert protested. 
“I’m only getting back to my usual.” 

“Just about.” 

“But you ought to be improved by suffering,” re¬ 
marked Jo Ellen, dodging a long reach by the heavy arm. 

“If I could’ve caught that red head of yours, ” grunted 
Bogert, “one handful, I’d make you talk sweet. It 


THE SPOUTING DEVIL 


9 


only shows, Jo, that you made a mistake having a red¬ 
headed daughter. They’re always unmanageable. ” 

“Not very respectful,” suggested Mrs. Rewer drily. 

Jo Ellen cocked her head. “Uncle Ben, wouldn’t 
you hate to have me respect you?” 

He grinned at his niece with a puzzled glint in his 
deep-set eyes. If he had been her father he might have 
been quite as much puzzled. He told himself this at 
times. Yet he was in the habit of ascribing much of 
his mystification to the fact that he was only her uncle. 
He thought he understood his sister. His sister’s 
daughter was naturally more complicated. Girls 
couldn’t be diagramed in a blue print. For one thing, 
they were so quick. And whatever you might figure, 
there was always something you didn’t know about. 
No use trying to get at that —whatever it was. Father 
or uncle would be in the same boat. As for any husband, 
poor devil, what chance would he have—beginning so 
late in the game? What blunders he would make, damn 
him! . . . Throughout all the gropings of his rudi¬ 
mentary analyses, Bogert’s affection retained a fanatical 
sensibility. She irritated and charmed him. He wanted 
her left alone, and he wanted to intrude. Once there 
had been a violent scene. ... He was always sorry 
about that. He had been foolish, but the head of the 
house had some rights. That she should blaze up and 
push him. ... It was ghastly. He might have clouted 
her one. What then? He had felt smashed. He had 
wanted to go and sit beside her bed until she fell 
asleep. . . . 

v 

Before Jo Ellen fell asleep that night, something out 
of the dark reminded her with a fresh sharpness that 
Uncle Ben’s illness should be taken as a warning. It 
was true that if Uncle Ben had died, everything 
would have been changed—extraordinarily changed. 


10 


JO ELLEN 


Death was tremendously real. Nothing much else 
seemed to be at all like it. People were always getting 
excited, yet nothing very exciting ever seemed to happen; 
nothing real. Getting to work would be real, in a way; 
realer than school. School was mostly talk. When 
Marty Simms, before his family moved away, used to 
mention a book he had been reading, she used to say 
she was tired of reading. She wondered why she was 
tired; whether it was because the books didn’t seem 
real enough. Yet some books had been thrillingly 
real. She went about thinking of them for days. Marty’s 
way of mentioning a story never made her feel the real 
side of it. She felt that he became emotional about the 
wrong things. He was, she supposed, what you would 
call romantic, and this seemed to result in his wishing 
her to be romantic, and about the same things. It was 
possible to see that he was often much hurt by her 
failure to see a wonder as he saw it. It was true that to 
be with him was sometimes exciting. . . . But a lot 
of irritation was mixed up with her feeling. 

She crept out of bed and dropped on her knees with 
her face close to the window screen. There was nothing 
to look at. . . . Trees in a black mass. Nothing else 
but the smoky gray of the closed-up house the Simms 
family used to live in, now vaguely revealed by some 
distant electric light, a flat-faced house with a fright¬ 
fully vacant expression. There were broken windows. 
For some reason no one had lived there since the Simmses 
went away. Neglect began to give it an accused look. 
... A shadow flickered across the ground level of the 
visible corner . . . like a dark ghost. She was sure she 
saw a figure. 

It was at night that she was most likely to feel shut 
in. This was why she so often wanted to go somewhere 
at night. Her mother called this gadding. At the 
moment she would have liked to be at a real dance. 
Not down at the Dyckman Street Academy. Not 


THE SPOUTING DEVIL 


11 


with a three-piece family jazz band such as the Tice’s 
had asked her to hear the following night. Somewhere 
quite different . . . huge and glittering, with a sweep 
of shining floor and a great orchestra that could gather 
you up like a passionate w r ind. There would be magical 
lights, constellations of them, gorgeous clothes . . . and 
some man who would understand everything. . . . 
Everything. 

The black lacing of the trees hung like a curtain that 
would not lift. Locusts droned in a mesmeric rhythm. 
The deep sound from the floor below, so deep as to be 
felt rather than heard, was Uncle Ben snoring. 

VI 

The morning was humidly heavy, and seemed to 
carry over in a staring way the things Jo Ellen had 
been thinking darkly the night before. 

Mrs. Hewer’s morning ritual had a lively movement. 
She said she liked to get things done and out of the way. 
When things were done and out of the way, she was not 
superior to any form of amusement. Just now her 
brother disturbed the ritual and must continue to do 
so until he was ready to go back to business. Bogert 
commented freely on all domestic functions. That 
anything should be done very early that might be done 
as well a little later, struck him as illogical, as femininely 
illogical. 

“What I think, Jo,” he would say, “is that this 
isn’t energy. It’s only nervousness.” 

“I’m not at all anxious about what you think, Ben,” 
Mrs. Rewer would answer cheerfully. “Move your 
big body out there on the porch until I get this place 
straightened up. ” 

“A female Simon Legree,” growled Bogert. 

Billy, aged twelve, was a slow boy who gave the 
impression of desiring to be obedient. But he had deep 
absorptions, sometimes in a magazine, sometimes in 


12 


JO ELLEN 


devices involving tools, often in hurried preparations to 
go out. When his mother issued a request, he said, 
“In a minute,” or “Right away, Ma.” The repetition 
of the request was likely to be sharper, and Billy would 
emerge with signs of knowing only from the tone that 
the request had been made before. Very often he would 
disappear without remembering his “in a minute” 
bargain. He was clever in explaining the omissions. 

“You’re the greatest explainer that ever happened at 
twelve,” said his mother. 

Billy’s notion of Jo Ellen was that she wouldn’t 
stick at anything. If his sister couldn’t do a thing 
quickly she wouldn’t do it at all. “It’s got to be bingl” 
he said, “or you won’t bother. ” 

The king of the early morning’s housework rather 
suited Jo Ellen. She was full of intentions, as her 
mother well knew, and the after-breakfast hustle favored 
any subsequent personal plans. Getting things done 
and out of the way was particularly congenial when she 
felt restless. She could turn restlessly to the dress she 
was making. She always liked a dress when she was 
making it. When she was through with it she was not so 
sure. Of course, it had to be cheap. What an enormously 
delightful matter it would be to find yourself earning 
enough money to have all sorts of things you wanted—to 
do all sorts of things you wanted to do! Enough money. 
All the trouble came back to that. Enough money was 
supposed to spoil some people. Jo Ellen knew in detail 
all the w r ays in which it would not spoil her. Nothing 
was plainer than that she would be immensely improved. 
It would be noticeable from the very beginning. If she 
had enough money by night fall she would be improved 
before she could get to bed. Naturally this would mean 
that her mother would have enough money, too. 

“Well,” said her mother presently, noticing a long 
pause in the figure at the shaded end of the porch, 
“what are you wishing now?” 


THE SPOUTING DEVIL 


13 


Jo Ellen was not startled by the accuracy of this 
surmise. She knew her mother’s theory that one child 
was always explaining and the other always wishing. 

“I was wishing,” said Jo Ellen, “that I had a job.” 

“I see,” said her mother. “I thought maybe you 
might have a new wish.” 

The sarcasm was to be expected. There was always 
a flare when this subject came up. Jo Ellen had learned 
that she was ungrateful. Huge sacrifices were made to 
give her an education. Uncle Ben, swinging his arms, 
had even talked about college. It was being ungrateful 
to ignore all these efforts for her good. “I don’t want to 
be sacrificed for!” she had cried out. “I’m not ungrate¬ 
ful. It doesn’t mean what you say it means.” There 
was no end to the argument. 

Nevertheless, Mrs. Rewer had been shaken in her 
certainties by the typhoid. She had been reminded poign¬ 
antly, as her daughter had been reminded, that every¬ 
thing hinged upon the welfare of the burly man who had 
gone so close to the brink. Ben had theories he never 
could back up. He was a big talker. College, for 
instance. That was just funny. Yet he was returning 
to business, and there was no reason why Jo Ellen 
shouldn’t finish with high school. Another winter 
would do it. She was nearly seventeen. This was her 
last summer of being a girl. If a girl could only know. . . . 

“I can’t stop wishing,” said Jo Ellen coldly. 

“And spoiling your last good summer.” 

There was the drag of everything that had been said 
over and over again. 

Later in the morning Myrtle Fleck was on the porch, and 
Mrs. Rewer heard a lot of laughing and whispering gossip. 
Mrs. Rewer regarded Myrtle as particularly silly—as boy- 
crazy and snaky in her ways, full of furtive tricks. Not 
to be trusted. Her giggle had something sensual in it. 

When Jo Ellen disappeared in the afternoon Mrs. 
Rewer wondered whether Myrtle . . . 


14 


JO ELLEN 


But Jo Ellen was quite alone after Billy had persuaded 
her to behold something in the cave at the head of the 
hollow. The cave was often a meeting place for the 
Clove Club, and was consecrated to piratical secrets. 
Jo Ellen wandered down into the hollow where, in 
summer, you seemed to touch the bottom of Nothing. 
A wilderness. Trees, bushes, bits of wild color, tangled 
places, spots of sunlit green. On the west the sheer 
rocks upon which, above the spring, the Indians had 
scratched the Spouting Devil. Over all, silence. The 
loneliest acres in New York. 

Ye,s a great place in which to be miserable, if you 
wanted that. And not a bad place for thinking without 
interruption. But Jo Ellen found that she didn’t want 
to think there. The silence was like something pressing 
down on your head. Once she could be there, without 
resentment, for an hour, mooning around or simply 
doing nothing. Evidently this meant that she was older. 
Also it must mean that she was Through. The withered 
trunks, the ghosts of vines that had been, the broken 
bits of sapling, and the matted leaves of another day 
all seemed to be whispering, “Dead!” and this was 
quite horrible . . . enough to make you scream. 

She swung about and began running . . . through the 
bushes and across a slope that reached away from the 
paths, which involved vaulting over a prostrate tree 
and crawling under a briary arch. Beyond was the 
grass-grown foundation of a house that had burned and 
a clearing that once had been a garden. Still higher 
was a dismantled shack and the scattered stones of 
an old wall. These obstacles were a real adventure 
when you took them at high speed. The end of the 
sprint came before the summer kitchen of the empty 
Simms house. 

To be here at the back door of a house in which 
nobody lived might have seemed a culminating irony, 
if Jo Ellen had been a psychologist. In fact, it changed 


THE SPOUTING DEVIL 


15 


the current of her feeling for the moment. It did more; 
it seized her attention. She could not have been sure 
what this something was, whether a flicker in the corner 
of one of the smeared windows or an effect in the door. 
The door was in the shadow of a roofed space between 
the house and the summer kitchen, and she had a sense 
of an ended movement, as though it might have been 
slightly open and then fully closed again. 

The boys had found a way of getting into the house, 
and Billy, for one, had been firmly forbidden to violate 
its integrity as a locked place. Jo Ellen knew that at 
this juncture Billy was in the pirates’ cave. 

She went to the door and tried the handle. 

That was a surprise, to have it swing freely. The 
winter kitchen, very dusty, and with the unaired smell, 
stared back at her. From the middle of the floor the 
dining room beyond repeated a like stare. When the 
shadow at her feet showed the slow closing of the door 
behind her, Jo Ellen turned sharply and saw the man. 

He made a strange movement with his hand. She 
could get this much before being able very clearly to 
make him out.^ 

“What do you mean by that?” she demanded, ad¬ 
vancing meanwhile to reach the door knob. 

He shifted his position until his back was against the 
door. 

“Let me say something to you,” was his answer. 

She could see him clearly now; a young man, tallish, 
with rather remarkable blue eyes, a jaw that would be 
remembered, and lips that seemed to wait. He was with¬ 
out hat or coat. One side of his soft collar was streaked 
with dust. There was rust on the cuffs of his shirt. 

“We’ll open the door first,” said Jo Ellen, “if you 
don’t mind. ” 

Her hand went forward in a determined way. 

“But I do mind,” he said, without moving, “you 
needn’t be afraid of me. I-” 



16 


JO ELLEN 


“Let me get this door open,’' commanded Jo Ellen. 
She tugged at the knob until the door bumped his heels. 

“Look here, kid!” He caught her wrist with an un¬ 
equivocal grip. “Listen. Don’t be a little fool. I 
want-” 

“We’ll see who’s the fool,” and Jo Ellen accomplished 
an astonishing wriggle, an utterly unbelievable wriggle, 
that brought her other hand close to the edge of the door. 

“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” he said, without 
changing his position, and Jo Ellen at once became 
aware of a fact that remained vividly w r ith her there¬ 
after, one that had a startling significance. This was 
the fact that he now held her wrist at an angle and with 
a firmness that left her quite helpless. 

Nothing like this had ever happened to her. She had 
thrown Bud Blakely, who was half a head taller than 
herself; she had wrestled with Uncle Ben until he was 
gasping. O yes! she had performed prodigies of wrig¬ 
gling at one time or another. And here she was held out 
like a fish on a string by the left hand of a man who 
seemed to be taking no trouble at all. 

She looked up into the blue eyes with what should 
have been indignation, but actually was an astonished 
awe. 

VII 

However, one could not afford to be awed for very long. 

“Let me go!” she said, in a whisper that had all 
of her anger quivering at the edge of it. 

“If you’ll let the door alone.” 

He succeeded in making this sound very clear and 
final. 

“You see,” he said, “that door . . . anybody might 
see it open . . . like you. Can’t risk that. Makes 
this damned place like an oven. I slept out there last 
night. ” He jerked his head to indicate the yard at the 
back. “But now it’s daylight. Anybody-” 




THE SPOUTING DEVIL 


17 


“What do you want?” asked Jo Ellen steadily. 

“Will you let the door alone?” 

“Yes.” 

He released his hold. She continued to look at him 
fixedly. 

“ Could you find a way of getting me a drink of water? ” 

His voice had changed and the softening of it came 
ludicrously. A drink of water. If she went after it . . . 

“What’s the idea?” challenged Jo Ellen. “If I go 
out—how do you know . . . ? ” 

“I’m taking a chance,” he said. “But I’m burning 
up here. Since last night.” He saw her glance move 
toward the taps in the kitchen. “Water turned off. 
Went after the connection in the cellar. Rusty handle— 
it broke off. ” 

“But who are you? Why did you come here? Are 
you hiding?” 

“Hiding? Yes, that’s it. Until to-morrow morning. 
Until to-morrow morning ought to do the trick.” He 
reached in his pocket, drew out a cigarette case. “Last 
one.” He stepped into the shadowy corner to strike 
the match. 

“If you’re hiding,” said Jo Ellen, “ what are you?” 

He looked at her through the blue haze of the smoke. 

“The bulls would use bad names.” 

“Bulls-!” 

“The police.” 

“Then you’re just a burglar?” 

And he laughed, not altogether with a happy effect. 
“No. Nothing like that.” He flicked the ash and 
stepped closer. “See here, kid. I’m gambling on you. 
I haven’t done anything. It wouldn’t do you any harm 
to take my word. But the gang of them is out to get 
me—for something I didn’t do. That happens . . . 
when you haven’t been very good. See? And I’m 
gambling on you to keep quiet. Quiet. After you 
bring the drink of water-” 




18 


JO ELLEN 


“At night,” said Jo Ellen, “when it’s dark—why 
couldn’t you . . . the bridge—” 

He shook his head. “They’d watch that if they 
didn’t watch anything else—that and the Dyckman 
Street ferry. They know I got to the hill. By to-morrow 
they’ll think I slipped through. Understand? ” 

“And you’re gambling on me.” 

“ Got to. Unless I kept you here. ” 

“Kept me here? You’d find that quite a job. ” 

“I’d have to hurt you.” 

Jo Ellen considered this. “What do they call that,” 
she asked him, “when you help hide a—a crook?” 

He gave her a hard look. 

“Who’s asked you to help hide a crook? Call me 
anything you like, but all I’ve asked you for is a drink 
of water. A drink. I’ve been here since last night—” 
“Since ten o’clock,” said Jo Ellen. 

It was really exciting to see him start at this. 

“How did you know?” 

“I just happened to notice something from my 
window. I didn’t think about it. Now I remember. 
And I can’t see how you knew—in the dark—that it 
was an empty house.” 

“I knew it was empty.” He paused for a moment. 
“I’ve been in it when it wasn’t. The place seemed pretty 
nearly as cheerful then. A visit, and no fancy welcome. 
People don’t welcome a black sheep. Maybe you never saw T 
a black sheep. Maybe you haven’t any in your family. ” 
Jo Ellen tried to grasp this. 

“I’ll make it short,” he said. “Simms is an uncle 
of mine.” 

“I see.” 

“I’ll bet you don’t,” he said, flinging away the last 
of the cigarette. He took out a soiled handkerchief 
and mopped his neck. “You think I’m lying. A liar 
and a crook. That would put you in hard luck. ” 
“You’re Stan,” said Jo Ellen. 


THE SPOUTING DEVIL 


19 


“Then I’m not lying.” 

“I’ve heard of Stan.” 

“Does that mean I won’t get the drink of water?” 

“I can do better than bring water. Somebody—I’ll 
bring a wrench to turn the thing.” 

“You’re a good sport,” said Stan. “You’re—” 

She saw his eyes fix themselves under the frown. He 
seemed to stop breathing or at least to be suddenly 
set. She followed the direction in which he stared and 
saw a face at one of the windows. It was Emma 
Traub, her mouth open and her nose flattening against 
the glass. In an instant the image melted as if wiped 
away by a gesture with a cloth. 

“Hell!” came out of the stillness. 

Jo Ellen shrugged nervously. “She doesn’t matter.” 

The thick, hot silence settled again. 

“I’ll be back in a minute with the wrench,” she 
said, moving to the door. 

He glanced at her intently, and her look answered his. 

“Keep your eyes open,” he said. She fancied that 
in his own eyes there was a reluctance, if not a misgiving, 
though he was pretending to be offhand and confident. 

VIII 

Her mother was not in the house. Uncle Ben sat 
on the porch reading a newspaper. She came up at 
the back door (life had become full of back doors), 
found a wrench in the tool box, then paused to give 
consideration to an idea. She had thought of the 
collapsible drinking cup when she thought of the wrench. 
There was no reason why she couldn’t go further. 
From the ice box and the pantry shelf she accumulated 
the wherewithal for a package that went under her 
blouse. Her cheeks flushed in a criminal excitement. 

During the necessary detour from the back door she 
obeyed the instructions that weren’t needed. She kept 
her eyes open. 


20 


JO ELLEN 


Afterward she found it hard to recall precisely how she 
came to that other door and how she first knew that he had 
vanished. It had been funny to go from the cellar to one 
dusty room after another . . . even into the clothes closets 
and the attic. She called softly. (O-oo hoo! like Mrs.Tice.) 

Mr. Stan was not there. 

The Simms family’s black sheep. Evidently there 
was no telling how a black sheep would act. She had 
an interval of intensive thinking. If her mother saw 
her she would believe she was wishing. Well, perhaps 
she was . . . wishing she could know why he had gone; 
and how. Did he decide at the last that he couldn’t 
trust her? How could you trust a person after you had 
grabbed her and ordered her about? Yet she had been 
sure that he did trust her. 

She looked at the wrist on which his hand had 
closed so masterfully. It was an outrageous thing to do. 
Brutal. An amazing tingle had gone through her when 
he did it. Down to her toes. 

Presently, somewhere, she hoped he would get a 
drink of water. Even a crook . . . 

Bulls. That was a new word to Jo Ellen. There was 
something vivid about it, wdth a vigorous, angry, and 
pursuing sound. Probably a crook was like a redness. 
Bulls. She felt as if a flash of thrilling reality had 
slanted into the dull foreground. It was the sort of 
occurrence you could describe with a certainty of 
attention. . . . But she must not describe it. She 
supposed she was pledged to say nothing. This began 
to seem difficult, as an undertaking in itself. If you 
promised a crook. ... Of course she didn’t really 
promise him. Not definitely. Moreover, it was, in a 
way, a breaking of the bargain for him to go away. 
She said she would come back and she had done so. 
His part of it had broken clean off. 

Beyond all that, there was the question of Emma 
Traub. What was Emma Traub thinking? This 


THE SPOUTING DEVIL 


21 


came to appear very important. There would have to 
be an accounting between them. In an empty house 
with a man. Emma had seemed to get that quickly— 
instantly, as if it were enough to know at one time. 
What would her mind do with it? Jo Ellen must find 
out, promise or no promise. Emma belonged to the 
situation. There was no way of leaving her out of it now. 

She decided to find Emma Traub, which turned out to 
be an easy matter. The woman stood at the bend of the 
house path, her hands at her sides, her face fixed peer- 
ingly. Jo Ellen coming quickly, leaping here and there, 
might have been but a fragment in a spectacle that 
held her rapt and stony. The gray stupidity of her 
face did not change as Jo Ellen drew near. 

“What was it?” 

Emma brought this forth huskily as if her throat 
trembled. 

“In the house . . . ?” 

“A man asked me,” and Emma grasped Jo Ellen by 

the shoulder, “a man asked me—my God! how did I 

know anything? Asked me if I’d seen a guy with a 

gray suit, russet shoes and a Panama hat—that w r ay— 

if I had seen him anvwhere around. T haven’t seen 

%/ 

anybody,’ I said. ‘Anybody at all.’ But I had seen 
him, d’y’understand? I had seen him. You know. I 
was just coming from there —when I looked in. I 
didn’t see any Panama hat. But it w r as the one! Had 
I seen him, he says. ‘No,’ I says, ‘I haven’t. Nobody.’ 
What could I do? Suppose I’d said ... I w T as down 
off the road wdien I saw you go in the kitchen w r ay. 
You alone. Queer. I got to thinking about it. W’hat 
do you suppose she’s up to? I said. I w T as only going 
to bang on the window if I could see you inside. I 
saw the young feller. You had me guessing. You 
and him in there. The tw T o of you. Then the man 
meets me. I didn’t like the looks of him. A dick, I says 
to myself-” 



JO ELLEN 


QO 




“What’s a dick?” asked Jo Ellen. 

Emma Traub, who had been swinging one of her arms 
foolishly, as if beating time to her torrent, stiffened 
again. 

“ Do you mean a bull? ” asked Jo Ellen. She wanted to 
hear how it would sound. 

“A bull?—I don’t mean a bull. I mean a dick—a 
station man, or maybe headquarters—a detective— 
standing there and asking me. I didn’t know what he’d 
seen—which way I came. Y’d think the way he looked 
he thought I had his man. Could I tell him, ‘He’s 
down there in that house with Jo Ellen Rewer’? Could 
I? Then off he starts again. I kept out of sight. I 
couldn’t be sure which way he went at last. All I 
knew was that he’d go straight as he could to the place 
he thought I came from. And then—” 

“I suppose he caught him,” said Jo Ellen blankly. 

“Do you care? What was it?” 

“He said he didn’t do the thing they were after him 
for.”. . . The story had to come then. Emma gulped 
every word, nodding meanwhile in acknowledgment of 
each added fact, putting all together, this part and that, 
as under some momentous imperative. 

“Look here!” whispered Emma at the end, with a 
new clutch at the girl, “Look here! We haven’t seen 
anything. Not a thing. Get that? Not a thing. You 
didn’t see him. I didn’t see him.” 

“You mean that it’s a secret?” 

“A secret. Do you want them to have us up? Wit¬ 
nesses or something? Accomplices? Or being watched? 
They always watch a crook’s woman. Suppose— 

This last consideration subdued Jo Ellen. The con¬ 
spirators agreed to be silent. 

IX 

If being silent alone had occurred to Jo Ellen as awk¬ 
ward, being silent with a partner quickly appeared to be 



THE SPOUTING DEVIL 


23 


more than twice as trying. There were a lot of little 
secrets every girl had. A big secret, a sort of Real 
Thing secret, was inordinately different. This one had a 
brazen cast, a color of crime . . . with bulls and dicks in it. 

Jo Ellen went over some of Emma Traub’s expres¬ 
sions—about having us up . . . accomplices, witnesses. 
Most of all she was stirred by that hint about the 
watching of a crook’s woman. 

A crook’s woman. For a few minutes she almost 
had been something like that. Finding a way to get 
him a drink of water. Raiding an ice box for him. 
His woman would have been concerned in doing such 
things for him; in helping to think out plans for escape. 

Would a crook’s woman always believe in him? Would 
a crook’s woman call him a crook? This query had a 
profound bearing upon all the processes of Jo Ellen’s 
mind, and these processes went on so loudly for a few 
hours, and started up again with such a tumult, that she 
began to wonder -whether the disturbance was due 
to the original happening or to the bottling of it. She 
became sure that if the noise could be spilled it would be 
less awful. Yet there was a glamour about the secret, 
especially as a secret with dimensions, that was connected 
by vaguely ugly strings of circumstance with the total 
of the world. 

Sharing it with Emma Traub rather spoiled a certain 
impressiveness the secret might otherwise have had. 
As sheer caution, it couldn’t have the beauty that went 
with a strictly individual sacrifice, and Jo Ellen hated 
cautions. There was another side. If Emma hadn’t 
met her ogre and his challenge, and hadn’t been thus 
restrained from blabbing about that scene in the house, 
there could have been no secret, unless Jo Ellen were 
able to shut her up. On the other hand if the 
detective . . . 

There was no tracing the tangle of it. 

Uncle Ben would have enjoyed it uproariously. And 


24 


JO ELLEN 


she could imagine, too, the bitter twisting of his mouth; 
how Uncle Ben and her mother would have stiff words 
about whether he should be off investigating, and 
properly strangling somebody. 

Facing her mother gave a peculiar heat and noisiness 
to the secret. A guilty flush kept pushing its way into 
her face. It did not matter that her mother would 
have done as she did in the case of the fugitive. This 
only made the hiding of the circumstances harder to 
go on with, harder to justify, a little more foolish. Yet 
the hiding certainly had a thrill that communicated 
itself to the new dress, to supper, to drying the dishes, 
to trying to read a detective story inone of the magazines, 
to getting ready for the party at Tice’s. 

x 

The Tices lived on one of the houseboats moored at 
the head of the Creek, the harbor of the last of the 
Indians to leave Manhattan, at this northernmost 
tongue of the island that was once all of New York. 

A little beyond the famous tulip tree (with its painted 
label) you came to the barriers excluding outsiders from 
the brink of the Creek. These barriers were grotesquely 
mended. Wood, wire, sheet tin overlapped at impulsive 
angles. Signs said, “Private Keep Out.” The stroller 
who didn’t belong was forced to look down from the 
inner path upon the quaint clutter of moorings, landings, 
gangplanks, and houseboats. Starting at the sheds 
where they built launches, the huddle of skiffs and 
floating homes stretched in a curve to the beginnings of 
the Point. In all the thirty miles or more of Manhattan 
water front this is, in its way, one of the oddest spots. 
The tide rises and falls without sign. To the west is 
the little forest of the Point; to the north the slopes of 
the mainland behind the shuttle of the trains as they 
enter or leave the long reach of the Hudson; to the east 
the jump-across of Broadway and the windings of the 


THE SPOUTING DEVIL 


25 

Harlem; to the south the wooded Clove, sloping darkly 
from the rocky places. 

This clutter was as much out of the current of things 
as the old turn in the Creek. Like flotsam in a swale, 
the jumble of raw or painted wood, stovepipes, ropes, 
awnings, drying clothes, strange single-oar craft, anchor 
chains, flower boxes, had a haphazard detachment. 
You might have said that the place symbolized the left¬ 
over and forgotten aloofness of Inwnod Hill itself. 
There was the smell of an old wetness. And, as through¬ 
out the Hill, there was always the chance of living 
surprise. In a day of windless heat the scene might 
resemble so much abandoned wreckage, the litter of a 
past. Then a suddenly reared head, the clatter of a 
kitchen pan, or the sound of a saw could make the 
scene faintly alive. On a Saturday afternoon or Sunday 
there was, indeed, a special stir. Motor boats wrinkled 
this listless bypath of the river. There might be canoes. 
Visitors shuffled over the gangplanks and interplaying 
bridges. In the middle of the week the sun could scorch 
the region into quiet. Life withdrew under its shell. 
To-night there was the band. 

A muffled crash and the w r ail of the saxophone came 
through the trees as the girl turned into the shore path. 
Long before she reached the gangplank it was easy 
to picture Mortimer Tice at his drums. It had grown 
cooler, but Tice, so impressive as a floorwalker in the 
department store, would be in his shirtsleeves, with 
face up, his mouth twisting, and all of him working 
ecstatically at the complicated game of the little drum 
and the big drum, the triangle, the cymbals, and the 
wooden notes of the xylophone. Mrs. Tice, with her 
head swinging in emphasis, would be at the trembling 
piano in the corner. And Henry Tice, fifteen and long 
for his age, with a look of piercing solemnity behind 
the horn-rimmed glasses, would be blowing his soul 
into the vast, shining, bulbous “sax. ” 


26 


JO ELLEN 


At closer quarters Jo Ellen caught the added treble 
that meant Tice’s old violin. Who was playing it? 
Perhaps the Blakely boy’s father; or Mrs. Tice’s sister, 
who lived in Hoboken and once had a whole course of 
lessons at a conservatory in Jersey City. Then Jo 
Ellen detected a certain thin, wavering inflection that 
somehow meant Marty Simms. 

Very likely the Marty Simms part of it had been 
known to Mrs. Tice. Jo Ellen halted on the bank as 
the fox trot ended, and a squealing laugh, that was 
recognizable as coming from Papa Tice, burst forth at 
the moment when there might have been applause. 
She wondered whether it wasn’t a duty to feel offended, 
whether she shouldn’t simply turn about and go home. 
It was like a trick, the sort of thing busybodies did 
when they thought they knew something. . . . Pushing 
people together. If it hadn’t been for Mrs. Tice, Jo 
Ellen was sure she would have been offended. 

Under the circumstances it seemed to satisfy her 
that she should hold off a little. As soon as she came 
past the oak tree and the boat shed Mrs. Tice would 
spy her, so she seated herself on the humped turn of a 
root with her feet straight out. 

The punishment for this fell suddenly, for Sedley 
Mason came loping around the turn she had just passed. 
His ice-cream trousers were brilliantly visible. Possibly 
he had seen her ahead of him and would in that case 
think she had seen him and was waiting, which would 
be disagreeable. However, he seemed surprised at 
sight of her. 

She didn’t move. 

“Hello, Ellen! Going to the Tice’s?” 

She nodded. “There’s time for plenty of it.” 

“Q sure!” 

Evidently he was about to sit beside her when she 
got up, suffused by a happy realization. Strolling in 
with Sedley would be just the thing. She began to feel 


THE SPOUTING DEVIL 


27 


very gay at once. They went forward, Sedley hovering 
for an opportunity to touch her arm at any step that 
might be reasonably construed as hazardous. Her 
gayety continued while Sedley was saying something 
about Uncle Ben, about the weather, and about a new 
dance—not exactly a toddle but something like it—that 
Tyler said was going to be the whole cheese. It continued 
during Mrs. Tice’s shrill welcome, during Mortimer 
Tice’s handshake (in his department store manner) and 
doubtless influenced even her estimate of Morris Meyer’s 
plastered chin. Morris had been in an encounter with 
the Broadway Gang and some special honor, not yet 
made known, attached to his wounds. 

Marty Simms seemed to be getting taller. He greeted 
Jo Ellen with an intent look, as if he might be saying to 
himself that she was getting taller. He had been working 
now for over a year, and Jo Ellen noticed that there 
was some slight and not altogether satisfactory change 
in his manner. He wasn’t uppish; he even flushed as 
he shook hands. Perhaps it was something connected 
with his being taller and brushing his hair like the collar 
ads. Jo Ellen had noticed that people often changed 
when they went to work. She had made up her mind 
that when she went to work she would not become 
different in the slightest degree. People would say of 
her, with an effect of an astonished conviction, “She 
hasn’t changed at all!” Or perhaps, “The same old 
Jo Ellen!”. . . 

There wasn’t room for all of the audience in the Tice’s 
living room. The piano and Tice’s drums made large 
demand on the floor space, and after Henry and Marty 
Simms had places and working room there remained a 
chair, a stool, and the wall seat. Jo Ellen afterward 
wished she had chosen a place on the square of deck 
beyond the door, where Puss Kinney and her brother 
(who had come in a skiff) giggled with Myrtle and the 
Blakely boy. 


28 


JO ELLEN 


“Remember the Tinkle Trot, Marty?” cried Tice. 
“I’ve got something on the bells for that.” 

“I tell you, Pop,” said Henry solemnly, “just before 
the last of the first part there’s two bars where you 
ought to stop the drum. ” 

“Ah! Yes!” exclaimed Tice. “And the old sax 
chirps alone! I know! Ready, Ma?” 

Mrs. Tice at the piano smoothed her music sheet. 
“You bet!” 

The high spot of the Tinkle Trot was where Tice, by 
a flip of his elbow, and with the assistance of a lever, 
struck a chord of bells hanging from the ceiling, though 
that was a tense moment in which Henry, for the two 
unaccompanied bars, twittered wheezily in the depths 
of his horn. The drums, the intermittent brassy clang, 
and the chuckling noises evoked with the drum-sticks 
against a slab of wood, kept Tice in feverish action. His 
face shone, the cords in his neck stood out as the din 
deepened, his foot beat against the treadle that affected 
the steady booming of the bass drum, he hummed a 
tenor in certain passages with his mouth twisted to one 
side, and nodded an emphasis into Mrs. Tice’s trills. 

There was plenty of applause. 

“Some trot, what?” cried Tice. 

Jo Ellen did not like Marty’s playing. She told herself 
that it wasn’t the lack of dexterity or of practice—she 
knew that now he seldom played his own violin at home. 
It was the flavor of it she didn’t like, a kind of thin 
sweetness, a sentimental uncertainty reflecting the side 
of him that irritated her. She was glad of the piece 
Marty didn’t know and which the Tices played with a 
home-practice confidence on their own account. Doubt¬ 
less because the violin seemed thus to be thrust aside, 
Tice asked Marty to play the Nevins thing in which 
Mrs. Tice used to accompany him so nicely. 

Marty protested, but Mrs. Tice was firm and struck 
off the opening piano phrases. Jo Ellen watched Marty’s 


THE SPOUTING DEVIL 


29 


face while he played his solo. There was a moment when 
she wanted to go out and push Myrtle and the Blakely 
boy overboard for giggling, but she had to admit that 
the piece was a strain on politeness. She wondered 
whether it was violins she didn’t care for or whether 
the special look of Marty’s brown eyes made her nervous. 

“Good work!” commended Tice, as he began adjusting 
his machinery for another orchestral number. 

XI 

Puss Kinney and her brother having crowded into 
the cabin, and this having necessitated a rearrangement, 
Jo Ellen slipped out. The din was too close. And she 
had had enough. Presently she would go back. She 
leapt ashore and scurried vaguely into the darkness. 

It was a dark darkness, although there were stars. 
The band had begun again, and it was as if the sound 
drenched everything, making the light dimmer. You 
had to know the place in order to move successfully 
at these crazy angles, and to be respectful to a white 
dress. Running away from anything made you feel 
free for a little while. The warm bigness of night could 
let you alone. The Clove seemed to be walled straight 
up, up, to that indigo roof with the pale spangles. . . . 

Yes, she liked Marty Simms. But why did she also 
not like him? How could you like and not like a person 
at the same time? Would it be that way with everybody? 
No matter how much you might like anybody, would 
there always be something about him that made you 
have annoyed, or questioning, or not-liking times? 
Sight of the Fleck houseboat led her to wonder whether 
Myrtle, for instance, would feel the same way? Probably 
not. Myrtle had violent appreciations. Evidently, 
these were generally annoying to Myrtle’s mother, and 
sometimes infuriating to her father. Fleck thought 
dancing was a form of looseness, and on several occasions 
was known to have locked up his daughter when he 


30 


JO ELLEN 


suspected her of wicked intentions. Frightful scenes 
had occurred on the Fleck houseboat. The strange 
thing was that Myrtle never seemed to be sobered by 
these things. She emerged smiling and eager for fresh 
adventure. Her code had become simply that of not 
being caught, and she displayed a real gift for slipping 
around obstacles. The tricks in themselves pleased her, 
though she took them for granted. She assumed that 
every girl got around somebody. Jo Ellen knew that 
Myrtle always suspected her of being too proud to 
admit equivalent strategies. . . . 

From under an arch of branches that fell over the 
plankway, Jo Ellen made out a silhouette that moved. 
It sent her thought back to the shadow she had seen 
the night before at the corner of the Simms house, and 
this made her pause. The first thought was not of any 
real likeness in the shadow, so that her later suspicion 
came with almost as much of surprise as if it had occurred 
in the beginning. If this was Stan Lamar, he would have 
found the piped service tap of the Spouting Devil. 
He would not need a drink of water. But he would not 
be feeling free. And he would still be thinking that she 
had told. 

She could not call out. If he saw her figure he might 
disappear, and there would be no finding him. 

She had a thought. Afterward this thought could, she 
found, seem rather good or quite the opposite. But 
it would be something real, and something enormously 
different. It wasn’t easy to convey it to him, and 
getting it to him came first. 

At last she walked forward with one arm held straight 
aloft. In white, she was a clear mark, and he would see 
that she must be signaling. 

There was a quick movement in the silhouette; 
then it halted. . . . 

The thing he whispered, close to her ear, was: “I 
knew your walk.” 


THE SPOUTING DEVIL 31 

Her whisper was more to the point: “I know what you 
can do if you want to get away. ” 

Even in the dimness she could guess his skeptical 
stare. 

“Wait over on the shadow side of that landing,” and 
she pointed across the foreground jumble. Then she 
turned about, in her leaping way, and was gone. 

Perhaps he lifted a hand to protest. She suspected 
this, but did not turn. It was desirable that her plan 
should get its start during this band piece—the oars 
of the Kinney skiff might be temperamental. 

The one waiting in the shadow side of the landing, 
with a doubting patience, saw her float into view, and 
the skiff was soon at his feet. She sat alertly upright 
like a young ghost. She made him understand what 
he was to do. . . . There was an interesting detail. 
He was to lie in the bottom, which implied extending 
his feet under the thwart on which she sat. A young 
woman might do a bit of rowing alone on the Harlem 
of a summer evening. . . . 


XII 

At the start there was the turn of the old creek and 
the fragment of island left by the cutting of the shipway. 
Moored launches were to be dodged. One pretentious 
boat had a light in its cabin, but no one was on deck. 
Beyond was the open Harlem with the lamp-spattered 
lift of the other shore. The water had a flat, oily quiet. 
There was no tide swirl. A rower could be casual. 

When the band stopped, the deep pulsation of the 
crickets made the dark of the Clove seem enormously 
still. 

Two words, chopped off, as if to make the most econom¬ 
ical possible use of sound, came out of the bottom of the 
boat. 

“ Straight across. ” 

Did he think she was going to row him out into the 



32 


JO ELLEN 


Hudson or go excursioning to the Bronx? Very likely 
he would fancy her as debating, or as having some theory. 
To let her know that straight across was good enough 
might have occurred to him as worth while. After all, 
it was his escape. 

And she was helping. O yes! she was helping. Getting 
a drink of water for him was a small matter compared 
to this. When you really came to think of it, this was 
going pretty far, just to prove that you were sorry— 
and that you hadn’t told. Probably this was some 
sort of a crime. If he were captured while you were 
rowing him, that crook’s woman matter would be 
terrific. With him flat in the bottom of the boat, you 
couldn’t pretend anything. It wasn’t even as if you 
knew what this person in the bottom of the boat (seeing 
nothing but stars) was accused of. There might be a 
Body somewhere. . . . And you were deliberately rowing 
him away. Not rowing him very well. The oars were 
acting queerly. 

She looked over her shoulder. There was a black 
boat, not exactly a skiff, with two men in it, midway of 
the river. She could hear the men talking, which 
reminded her of how treacherous words were on the 
water. She wondered whether the men were people in 
particular or simply two men. 

She looked again. The one with the oars had stopped 
rowing. She would like to have moved in a wide curve. 
No. She must go straight. Only straightness would 
escape suspicion. Straightness carried her within a 
dozen yards of the other boat. One of the men began 
singing softly. There was something in the song about 
“a white robe she wore.” The one who was not singing 
laughed. 

Two dicks could be sitting in a boat. But they would 
have no orders to stop a girl who was rowing across 
the Harlem. And she decided that these were not dicks. 
It would be better if she didn’t think about anything 


THE SPOUTING DEVIL 


S3 


but the oars, and making them go in and out of the 
water cleanly. . . . 

She was drawing near the other side. The band was 
playing again. She could hear Tice’s drum distinctly, 
the noisy pulse of the piano, and occasionally a wail 
from the saxophone. They might think she was still 
sitting on the houseboat deck or otherwise hovering. 
The world teemed with secrets. It was odd that Myrtle 
Fleck who enjoyed hidden exploits should be sitting in 
Tice’s respectable cabin, and that the one who hated 
hiding—or who thought she did—should be off into the 
dark with a man who might be a murderer or anything 
you liked to think. 

She saw his feet twitch, and turning her head again 
saw that he was peering over the edge of the skiff. 

“On the right of that dock,” he whispered this time. 

Like a pilot to the one at the wheel. Very well. It 
would soon be over with and she could row back— 
quickly, the way she preferred to row. 

At the right of the dock there was, at low tide, a slope 
where the skiff grounded. Lamar was about to step 
out when some sound halted him, and he quickly drew 
the nose of the boat into the cavernous space under 
the dock timbers, a space so inhospitable that their 
two bodies were wedged together. There was a hot 
odor of rotted wood with a salty blend of other water¬ 
side smells. The blackness was complete, a black¬ 
ness so thick that you might think you would be 
dyed by it. Jo Ellen could feel the coming and going 
of Lamar’s breath and guess the intensity with which 
he listened. An effect as of heels moving through cinders 
seemed finally to die away, and Lamar’s tight muscles 
relaxed. Jo Ellen wriggled resentfully. This was far 
beyond anything she had bargained for. 

“ In a minute, ” Lamar whispered. 

A long minute, that grew stifling. Jo Ellen’s cheeks 
burned in the fearful intimacy of the contact. Seeing 


34 


JO ELLEN 

jM I 

\ 

it through—in the dark; this was what she was doing. 
This was what you could let yourself in for if you had 
impulses. 

When he pushed the boat into the open she could 
breathe a little better. 

He clambered out at last, and bent over to say, 
“You’re a wonder. I’ll find a way of telling you—tell¬ 
ing you how much obliged—” 

He was off, and she was pulling the skiff into deep 
water. 

XIII 

Marty Simms, standing on the deck of the house¬ 
boat with Puss Kinney, saw her draw in beside the 
landing. 

“There’s an idea!” exclaimed Marty. “Only you 
might have taken a fellow along.” 

Mrs. Tice came out. “Did we scare you off?” 

“It sounded good from the water,” Jo Ellen returned 
deceitfully. It was important that she should say good 
night to the Tices without getting within range of the 
cabin lights. She was not sure about the condition of 
her dress. She would have preferred to go home alone, 
to streak home in the most effacing way so that suddenly 
she might be in bed with time to think. However, 
going alone would be more eccentric than the vagary 
they were charging against her. Being escorted by Marty 
was an inevitable obligation. 

He wanted to hold her hand in the dim path, which 
seemed particularly foolish just now. Marty’s talk, 
too, had an inconsequential sound, like the thin note of 
his violin which was lost altogether when you were a 
little way off. Nothing Marty might say could possibly 
seem important, like being in a pitch dark place under 
a dock, pressed in a sweaty closeness, against a young 
man you didn’t know. After that, holding hands— 
well, it was a kind of decent relief, but it did seem silly; 
and it was hard to get your mind around so that you 


THE SPOUTING DEVIL 


35 


could pretend to listen while he was saying how good it 
seemed to be getting back to the old Clove. Living on 
a roof away downtown was sometimes interesting 
enough by day, but at night ... at night it was horribly 
lonesome, about as lively as Trinity graveyard. You 
had to go uptown again to get to anything. 

“I wish you’d come down and see the old joint some 
time,” he said. “There’s a wonderful view. The Bay, 
Liberty, both rivers—on a clear day I can see this hill, 
twelve miles away. Some afternoon. What do you say ? ” 

“I’ve been up in the Woolworth,” said Jo Ellen. 
She didn’t name her chief objection to visiting the 
skyscraper roof. Mrs. Simms was a cold woman, with 
an eagleish look that accused all girls. When the Simmses 
lived at Inwood—before Martin Simms, senior, became 
superintendent of the tall building down near Wall 
Street—she had called Jo Ellen “that red sparrow.” 
Perhaps “sparrow” wasn’t ineradicably insulting. But 
it was quite of a piece with other things she said. A 
recollection influenced Jo Ellen’s response to the sug¬ 
gestion. The matter was left to await circumstances— 
Uncle Ben’s health for example. 

Marty had another suggestion. This was for a day 
at Coney Island. He was having his vacation, and was 
privileged to urge that they go on a Monday, for instance, 
when if they didn’t have the place all to themselves they 
might at least feel slightly less jammed and pummeled. 
He was to call up on the ’phone very early to see whether 
Jo Ellen thought it was the sort of a day that would be 
right. Of course, there was always Tuesday or Wednes¬ 
day. His vacation left him free to a large choice. He 
would be rich in days until the following Monday. 

For all of the interval Marty was peculiarly a problem. 
He was in no general way simply one of the persons to 
whom you did not mention a certain matter. He was 
Mr. Crook’s cousin. He could tell a lot, which would be 
supremely interesting, and the whole absorbing affair 


36 


JO ELLEN 


with its oddness and mystery could acquire much by 
his participation. It would be painful to him, but 
things about families often must be painful. You had 
to have these pains. You got used to them, expected 
them to go on happening. And naturally you knew 
things that alleviated the pain of them, perhaps, or 
helped to the taking of them for granted. There were 
ancestors, for instance, whose cussedness had been passed 
along, making it quite natural if not altogether inevitable 
that the descendant should be whatever he was, though, 
of course, you kept right on being annoyed by the de¬ 
scendant and made it as hot for him as you could. It 
was a duty to interfere with the momentum of the wicked 
trait. Perhaps it could be tapered off in time. 

Or there might be something about a childhood, 
whether the family thought about it or not, that ex¬ 
plained terrifically. Jo Ellen, instigated by Myrtle 
Fleck, had sat in a daze through a lecture on psychoanal¬ 
ysis. It had seemed ! reasonable enough, in the parts 
she could understand, but it made her uncomfortable. 
There was a good deal about dreams and she very 
seldom had a dream. That deficiency in dreams appeared 
as a defect, or at least as an abnormality. She preferred 
to be natural. It was made plain in the lecture that 
being natural was desirable. After that when she had 
a dream she made a great effort to remember it, to 
straighten out the thread of it, and this was desperately 
hard. Her dreams didn’t seem to be clear. She con¬ 
cluded that they were not the kind you were expected to 
have, the kind that could be translated and would 
explain everything about you. 

Myrtle Fleck said she had wonderful dreams. The 
boys in them were very clear, down to the color of their 
socks. She often thought she was going to be married 
in one of the dreams. In fact, she often felt as if this 
were at the brink of happening. But it never quite 
did. Some day she was going to a Freudian doctor to 


THE SPOUTING DEVIL 


37 


have her dreams read. She supposed she would have 
to tell them all, or nearly all. Anyway, it would be 
tremendous. . . . 

Jo Ellen remembered that Marty had once told her 
of a dream in which she appeared. It was one day when 
the two had a picnic on the Point, where the trees are 
very tall and old and where a lot of them, naked and 
black, lay dead across the paths, making it a climbing 
or crawling matter to get around. The funny thing, 
he said, was that whereas she was Jo Ellen at the begin¬ 
ning of the dream (he seemed to be seeing the dream 
quite circumstantially in the middle of a sandwich) 
with something like a wand, or maybe it was a sword 
in her hand, she suddenly became another person. “Do 
you mean another girl?” Jo Ellen had asked him. 
O no! he hurried to say. It was a woman—very much 
older—and impressively majestic. Since nothing in 
particular had happened in the dream, the listener 
wondered why he told it. Probably he had been reading 
something. To Marty the vividness of Jo Ellen had 
been quite enough to make the dream remarkable, 
although the transmutation had been stated as its 
special feature. He had asked Jo Ellen if she believed 
in dreams. This being before the period of the psycho¬ 
analysis lecture, Jo Ellen had merely been amused and 
perhaps slightly contemptuous. When she had asked, 
pointedly, what he meant, he had answered, unsatis¬ 
factorily, that he was just thinking. He knew that 
there was such a thing as believing in dreams. As 
usual, Jo Ellen was disconcerting. 

To have Coney Island as something that impended 
was not what it might have been if there were no inter¬ 
vening secret. That intervening secret affected every¬ 
thing. It had assumed a bulky inconvenience since its 
beginning. The more she thought of the affair of the 
boat, the harder she found thinking of the secret as 
innocent. The whole thing had become harder to think 


38 


JO ELLEN 


about comfortably. It was harder to imagine not 
knowing anything more about Stan Lamar. He had 
escaped. That was that. It would be better not to 
know anything more about him. You could figure it 
out quite plainly that when you couldn’t go on with a 
thing, couldn’t go on knowing more, it was better to 
have it stop short, to have it blotted out by darkness. 
. . . His figure just evaporated into the world that was 
not Inwood. If you had been foolish, that was a good 
way to have the foolishness come to an end. 

It was a pity, a little more of a pity than at first, 
that there had to be Emma Traub. No use telling Emma 
Traub about the boat. Not telling her seemed to make 
the case more complicated, but having her know threat¬ 
ened, unquestionably, to increase the awkwardness 
of the secret. If there was something really repre¬ 
hensible about the boat part of it, no use forcing a guilty 
knowledge on Emma. Yet she had a curious interest 
in meeting Emma. 

XIV 

The day of the Coney Island trip, although it promised 
adroitly in the early hours, had several paroxysms of 
rain with intervals of a nervous brightness. Marty 
was very enterprising in working out plans he had made. 
These plans were modified somewhat by the showery 
incidents and by the state of the streets and shore spaces 
while these were steaming toward dryness. He carried 
Jo Ellen’s bathing suit, rolled tightly in its rubber cover, 
and knew precisely when they were to go in, and where. 
He had a theory about Steeplechase, because he knew 
she had been there on a birthday with Uncle Ben and 
had laughed much. On the whole, Steeplechase was 
not so successful an adventure as he had expected. 
It appeared that she had laughed chiefly at Uncle Ben, 
who had committed extraordinary deeds. You might 
think to hear Jo Ellen that Uncle Ben had Coney Island 
in an uproar. Where Uncle Ben had been amusing 


THE SPOUTING DEVIL 


39 


Marty was gallantly solicitous. He took care that Jo 
Ellen should escape the trick places where gusts of air 
blew your skirts up. He was somewhat astonished that 
she should wish to try the slides that tumble you about, 
and admired intensely her cleverness in not being 
tumbled shamelessly like some of the other girls. Jo 
Ellen had no misgivings about dignity. She was fickle 
as to anything she had seen or tried on earlier visits, 
whereas Marty liked to do things because he had done 
them before. 

They were fully agreed upon two features of the day: 
the surf and the dancing. Jo Ellen threw herself into 
the sea with a reckless hilarity, swimming and plunging 
so vigorously that Marty was kept at the limit of his 
speed. Once when her cap came off, showing the flash 
of her hair, a squealing voice piped, “Gee! the ocean’s 
on fire!” Marty scowled angrily. Fortunately the voice 
was not to be identified. 

' On the sand in the sun he built a hillock against 
which Jo Ellen w r as to rest her back while her hair 
dried. As they sat half buried, he exclaimed exultantly 
that it would be fine to be where you had miles and 
miles of sand and where no mob kept you from seeing 
the blue rim, on and on. He didn’t say anything about 
holding her hand in such a picture, but the wdsh for 
this, or for some equivalent adjustment, was in his 
voice. 

The best dance was in the big pavilion, where you 
could trot around a circle that expanded like an equator 
and where the band had almost the symphonic splendor 
Jo Ellen liked to imagine. Marty was a better dancer 
than Jo Ellen had believed. He was prolific in new 
steps, which he introduced casually. When Jo Ellen 
followed them all he remarked with fervor that their 
way of dancing together was simply perfect, as if they 
were cabaret partners or something. 

They had agreed upon a shore dinner at Calingo’s 


40 


JO ELLEN 


and Jo Ellen found opportunity to notice Marty’s 
older manner, particularly in the matter of the waiter, 
who was fat and red, with a bristling black mustache. 
Marty was peremptory with the waiter, but the waiter 
was not to be affected by any sort of manner. He gave 
the impression of being deeply thoughtful about some¬ 
thing else, and Marty had to repeat everything a second 
time. All that Marty contrived to say appeared to be of no 
importance whatever. The waiter spoke but a single word. 

“Beer?” he asked absently. 

“No,” answered Marty. 

When the waiter turned coldly away, Jo Ellen con¬ 
cluded that if they didn’t want beer they were beneath 
consideration and that nothing further could be expected. 
Some time later they saw the owner of the black bristles 
standing with his hands under his apron, his face more 
acutely red, as if in fury, or shame, or in the distress of 
some secret illness, staring into the alley traffic. Never¬ 
theless, the shore dinner came at the moment when hope 
of it had been abandoned, and it was memorably good. 
Jo Ellen, having no cares, ate enthusiastically. 

“I wouldn’t give such a person a tip,” she said as the 
end of the dinner drew near. 

But at about this time the waiter began to seem less 
withdrawn, as if he had mastered the family grief or 
whatever it was that gnawed behind his frayed shirt 
front. He even betrayed a fear that some little detail 
of the feast, like the position of the sugar in relation to 
the dessert spoons, might fail of an utter nicety, a per¬ 
fection exquisitely complete. Jo Ellen concluded that 
Marty, at the last, felt sorry for him, and Marty wished 
Jo Ellen wouldn’t watch him while he paid the bill. 
It would have been better if a man-to-man matter could 
have been conducted without an audience. When the 
waiter, by a flipping motion, juggler style, had gathered 
the tip in the one hand that lifted the change tray, 
his earlier aloofness returned. 


THE SPOUTING DEVIL 


41 


*So did Marty’s cheerfulness. They went forth 
into the outer turmoil with buoyant steps. The air 
reeked with fragments of jazz. 

xv 

They had not talked much at the beach. Jo Ellen’s 
responsiveness toward every painted spectacle, her 
birdlike alertness for each shifting phase of the scene, 
every barker’s bark, every fragment of tune, her comfort¬ 
able curiosity that could see stir without being stirred 
beyond a happy participation, were baffling to Marty’s 
conversational impulses. 

Yet his sense of well-being needed to be spoken. The 
feeling of approach to the status of a successful male 
creature expanded him, and Jo Ellen caught the signs of 
a voluble period. The train that carried them homeward, 
starting across the flatlands, then boring into the earth 
with a steely clatter, was not altogether favorable to 
conversation. It was stuffed with swaying people, 
who screamed to be heard above the reverberating 
howl of the car trucks in the caverns. The composite 
smell, dominated by the pungence of perspiration and 
damp clothes, the free contact of bodies, the readjust¬ 
ments at each station, the bits of drama when a child 
fell or a woman dropped some of her detachable belong¬ 
ings, all hurt the prospects of a confidence. But they 
created excitement, too. Marty was bound to talk. 

He wanted to tell about his position in the cold-storage 
company. There were many surprisingly interesting 
things about the business. He recited some of these 
with great earnestness. Jo Ellen’s attention wandered 
from the details. There was forcefulness in Marty’s 
way of talking, but she wished it had been something 
not quite like cold storage. Of course, he wasn’t per¬ 
sonally occupied in putting hens on ice. He was in the 
office, and there was the effect of his having his own desk. 
Yet she found the subject hard to follow in a crowded 


42 JO ELLEN 

subway car. Somewhere else at some other time it 
might seem different. 

“Are there any girls there?” she asked. 

“Three. One of them’s no good. MissGrobe. They’re 
always talking about firing her. She’s lazy and likes to 
start trouble. A snooper. And she’s always making 
dates on the ’phone. Miss Meisner’s better. A corking 
good stenographer. Miss Callahan’s the best. She’s 
a peach. ” 

“What do such girls get?” 

Marty would have preferred to exhibit a closer 
familiarity with the employing side, but he was compelled 
to be indefinite. “I think,” he said, “Miss Callahan 
gets about twenty. She’s been there two years. They’ll 
have to give her more if they want to keep her. I’m 
not sure, but I think she’s engaged. ” 

“Has she told you?” 

“O no! She isn’t the kind that tells much. Jolly, 
and all that. Lots of pep, but cagey about her own 
affairs. You see, I noticed that she has a sort of ring. 
Not exactly a solitaire. Suspicious though. And 
there’s a way she looks when they talk about the boys. 
Maybe she’d keep her job after she’s married. They’re 
doing that a good deal.” 

“Are they?” 

“Even saying nothing about being married. A friend 
of mine says his wife is still Miss Stokes at her office 
(when he calls her up he says, ‘Miss Stokes, please,’) 
and she has a young boss who’s crazy about her. I 
should think that would make him nervous. Wouldn’t 
you? But he only laughs about it. He thinks it will 
be a great joke when they spring it that she’s been married 
a year. ” 

Jo Ellen laughed with a thought of the young boss. 
But it didn’t seem like so very good a joke. 

“I wouldn’t like it,” pursued Marty. “Of course 
it’s nice enough in some ways. ” 


THE SPOUTING DEVIL 


43 


“You mean the money.” 

“Yes, the money. Till they get started. I guess 
she’s pretty independent. She wouldn’t marry him 
unless he said she could keep the job. They meet 
every night at the Times drug store. Sometimes the 
boss leaves her with one of the dictated-but-not-read 
letters and she’s late. Then he gets sore. After that 
they drop in at the delicatessen for supper stuff. Except 
on Friday night. They go out to dinner on Friday night. 
They’re both paid on Friday.” 

“Are they happy?” asked Jo Ellen. 

“Sure. He says they’re still honeymoon happy. But 
I don’t like it. Looks sneaking. Don’t you think so?” 

“If she likes it. . . . ” 

“Waiting for her. Her with a boss. And the boss 
sweet on her. I don’t like it.” 

“It’s her affair.” 

“And his, too.” 

“But more hers,” insisted Jo Ellen. 

“Maybe. That’s all right. But she’s his wife, isn’t 
she?” 

“And he made a bargain.” 

“A bargain. Yes. He made a bargain. I suppose 
you could say that. He ought to have put a time limit 
on it. ” 

“Like a year.” 

“Yes. Like a year. Suppose they didn’t? They’ll 
come to a row. He’ll be saying, T want a real honest- 
to-God wife at home/ At home/' 

“But he’ll lose the money,” suggested Jo Ellen with 
a shading of malice. Marty left so many openings for 
malicious things. 

“Money! That isn’t everything. Besides, he’ll 
be getting a raise. ” 

“And she’ll be home doing the dishes and can’t marry 
the boss. ” 

Marty looked appalled. 


44 


JO ELLEN 


“Say! That sounds-” he began. A huge man had 

lunged against Jo Ellen’s knees in the process of releasing 
a scrambling group at one of the stations, and she 
didn’t hear how it sounded. 

When the train had shrieked its way under the soil 
of Manhattan, Marty was telling of a story he had read 
about the war; there was one thing in it . . . Two 
people who loved each other magnificently had to decide 
which one of them ought to die. They were on a raft 
or something with three cursing sailors, who had decided 
that they would all go down if some one wasn’t chucked 
over. Naturally, the lover wanted to be the one if it 
had to be the girl or himself. But there was the question 
of what would become of her, especially as a big, hairy 
beast had looked at her a good deal. She wanted them 
both to slip over together. But it was very important 
that he should get somewhere, or that a secret message 
he had in his belt should be carried through. He took 
off his belt and got it on her, pretending that he could 
hold her better. Then he suggested that the whole 
party draw lots to see who should be sacrificed. That 
was a thrilling point. It was a hard thing to do. They 
were all half under the water. It was getting dark. 
They broke up some strands of rope. The hairy beast 
got the bad one and jumped at the lover without waiting 
to curse. They tumbled over together and the beast 
finally went down. In the rough weather and darkness 
the lover couldn’t find the raft. He swam and floated, 
caught a spar, struggled all night, in the early morning 
kicked against a reef and at last got to a shore. ” 

“How about the girl?” asked Jo Ellen. She alwaj^s 
thought Marty was too slow in getting to the main 
point. 

“You’re always in a hurry,” he said. “She’s coming. 
She was picked up—they were all picked up—by a 
German submarine, and it looked bad for her. The 
lieutenant saw that she was a beauty all right. I think 



THE SPOUTING DEVIL 


45 


they were going to chuck the two sailors, when along 
comes a chaser, and they were saved. The girl tells the 
captain of the chaser she just has to see General So-and- 
So. ‘Can’t be done,’ he says. But she got there. She 
was that kind of a girl.” 

“But the lover . . . ?” 

“O you’d know he’d get to the General and start his 
story. And the General picks up the belt from under 
his papers! Can’t you imagine when the General pulls 
the canvas screen one side and there’s the girl?” 

“Was it true?” asked Jo Ellen. 

“Maybe. It was a story. Some thriller.” 

“Made up. The real war’s a great story.” 

“Ah! Yes! They say ...” 

For a time they talked about the real war. Marty 
pointed out a heading in a newspaper which a bedraggled 
man, squeezed into a corner, was trying to read. The 
crowd had thinned before they came to Dyckman Street, 
and a strident world seemed to have been abandoned 
when they left the train that had bored its way northward 
through sand and rock and now clattered through the sky. 

Jo Ellen felt a lassitude in the home scenes. Marty 
tingled under the spell of a warm, romantic unfoldment 
that appeared to set him happily at its center. As 
they drew near the Hill he realized the wonder of the 
venerable trees and a homely friendliness pervading 
the green recesses. In the last of the twilight the air 
was soft, sympathetic, with a kind of expectant sweetness. 
By a touch of the hand he contrived to urge Jo Ellen 
along the path that brought them to that ridge over¬ 
looking the eastern stretches, a ridge from which, 
through naked branches, one saw far in winter but in 
summer could trace no horizons. Two or three years 
before, when they were unthinkably young, they had 
together discovered a rock shelf, upholstered with weeds, 
overhanging the region of the primeval spring and the 
hollow of the Clove. It was but a step down from the 


46 


JO ELLEN 


shoulder of the ridge, an intimate space, a whimsical 
pause in the haphazard gesture of the landscape, ap¬ 
pointed, as you would say, for any chance two that 
should come to it in the process of time. They had 
always called it “the high place.” 

“Let’s sit down for a minute,” said Marty. 

To any eye that did not know, it might have been 
the brink of a canon. Night gave a curious vastness to 
the tangled mystery of all that lay below. There was 
an emanation from the inky shadows, something that 
was not the faint warm wind nor the whispered insect 
orchestration. It rose like a stupendous tide, impalpable 
and delicious, that lifted, lifted . . . 

“Isn’t it peaceful!” exclaimed Marty in a subdued 
voice. 

Jo Ellen nodded, her hands clasped over her knees. 
She could make out Marty’s face when she glanced 
obliquely. The moon had arisen but was not to be 
seen. They were within one of its shadows. In a little 
while, Marty stood out clearly enough to be compared 
in detail with Stan Lamar. She had made the comparison 
more than once during the day, but the setting had not 
been right. Marty was sturdy enough, though some 
inches short of Stan’s height, with no point of cousinly 
likeness that she could discover. Perhaps there was no 
weak line in his face. He was a good looker. His deep, 
olive brown eyes were wide and steady. His chin was 
all right. But in the lips, where you looked for reso¬ 
luteness . . . Well, it might be that there w T as a cruel 
possibility in Stan’s lips, something that waited nearer 
than in Marty’s. And was she only imagining the cousin? 
She couldn’t be sure. He was vivid in her feeling; 
extraordinarily vivid. But very likely he didn’t look 
quite as she thought. And what did it matter? She 
plucked one of the weeds beside her and threw it into 
the whispering cavern. 

If Stan had been caught in the house he would have 


THE SPOUTING DEVIL 


47 


thought she had told the man—the dick. By now he 
knew better, even if she hadn’t found a way in the boat to 
explain the truth. The boat had been the best explainer. 
And now he was free, though you couldn’t be sure. He 
might have. . . . Yes, he might have run straight into 
handcuffs. At this moment he might be in some jail 
or other. And he hadn’t done the thing they were 
after him for. 

“ . . . the way they pile up there out of the dark.” 

Marty was saying something pretty about the trees. 
He stirred as if out of a dream and drew closer to her, 
reaching for her hand. She let him take it and had a 
qualm of exquisite guilt that she should compare that, 
too—the touch. If it had been Stan Lamar a kind of 
thin fire would have raced up her arm . . . spreading 
like one of those nerve diagrams in the physiology. . . . 

She set herself to begin forgetting about Stan Lamar, 
and began at the same time to feel restless. 

Marty’s hand w T as warm and tense. 

“I wish we lived here again, ” he said. 

“I’m tired of it,” returned Jo Ellen. “I guess I’ve 
had enough of it. It’s no place to live—in a live city. ” 

“But think of downtown. Crowds and flats and noise. 
This is like the country. ” 

“Exactly!” cried Jo Ellen. “And I’m sick of the 
country. Sick of it. It’s all right for kids.” 

“Where would you like to live?” 

“Anywhere—I mean anywhere else. I guess it’s to 
get away, mostly.” 

“I see,” cried Marty. He had no wish to argue then. 
He felt ardently in agreement with all she might wish. 
Something that came to him in the feel of her hand 
gave him a poignant compassion. He was sure that he 
knew, acutely, just what she meant, just what she 
felt. Her need seemed to be aching and asking in the 
vast stillness. He peered into the cavern, at the fantastic 
silhouettes that multiplied endlessly, as if to mirror the 



48 


JO ELLEN 


immensity of the constellations overhead. The great 
beauty that flowed about them reached sharp contact 
in the lovely softness of her fingers. 

He did not notice that in her restlessness she had 
reached downward with her other hand. His face was 
lifted to the stars. 

“Aren’t they terrible?” she exclaimed. 

This turned him quickly. 

“Terrible . . . ? What . . . ?” 

“The mosquitoes,” said Jo Ellen. “My legs are all 
bitten up. ” 

“Oh! I didn’t—I didn’t notice them,” he fumbled. 

She drew away the fingers he had been holding. 

“Let’s go,” she said. 

He assisted her to the level of the ridge. When they 
came to the turn, the moon caught them and sent long 
shadows of their figures wriggling like gnomes that led 
the way. 


PART TWO 

Breaking Away 


AT the foot of the house steps Jo Ellen said: “I 
won’t ask you up.” 

-*■ She feared he might sit too long. There seemed 
to have been enough of everything that had been hap¬ 
pening. And of Marty. Enough for one day. Besides, 
she wanted to rub something on the mosquito bites. 

No offense sounded in the tone, and Marty, squeezing 
her hand, moved lingeringly away with a wave of his hat. 

Jo Ellen mounted the first flight of Uncle Ben’s 
steps two at a time. This having completed a sense of 
dismissal, she entered a new reverie in the slow mounting 
of the second flight. It was not until she came quite to 
the top that she saw the figure of a woman seated half 
in the sharp shadow cast by the moon. Not her mother; 
a wiry woman with iron-gray hair who stood up alertly. 

“You’re Ellen,” said the keen voice. 

Yes. ” 

I’m your grandmother.” 

“O Grandmother!” Jo Ellen’s arms went out and 
in the embrace she kissed her mother’s mother cordially 
on the cheek. 

Grandmother Bogert swung her into the moonlight, 
then swiftly lifted off her hat. In the sun Jo Ellen’s 
hair had the sheen of Spanish topaz; in the rays of the 
moon it was more to be likened to India garnet. The 
grandmotherly eyes made an electrically quick survey of 
all that stood before her. 

“My God! Think of this running loose!” 

49 


<< ' 




50 


JO ELLEN 


Jo Ellen laughed. 

“She runs loose all right,” came Uncle Ben’s growl 
from the house door. “Isn’t this rough? Grandmother 
and granddaughter have to introduce each other! 
Your mother’s in bed,” he informed Jo Ellen. “They 
talked themselves into headaches.” 

“Mind your own affairs,” commanded Uncle Ben’s 
mother. 

“ But you admitted it, ” said Bogert. 

“I never admit anything,” was the retort, “at least 
to a gabby man.” 

“O well, if you haven't a headache—” 

“ I suppose you had a good time, ” said Mrs. Bogert 
to Jo Ellen, drawing her to a seat on the porch bench. 

“Quite a day.” 

“ I saw Coney Island when you were a baby. ” 

“ I took her, ” said Uncle Ben. 

“And made a mess of it. Forgot his money.” 

“Never forget your money when you come near a 
woman! ” cried Bogert. 

j “Unless,” returned his mother, “You can choose, as 
you did, a woman who has something in her own pocket. ” 

“Pocket . . . !” Uncle Ben snickered. 

“ Yes, pocket. I always have a pocket. And we’d had 
to walk home if I hadn’t had something in it that day. ” 

“ Paid you back, ” laughed Bogert. 

“Naturally,” said his mother. 

“Now Ellen”—Uncle Ben drawled this—“speak nice 
to your grandmother. I’ve told her you’re not so bad 
as she might think.” 

“I wish you’d shut up,” the elder Mrs. Bogert inter¬ 
posed with a stern sort of grin. “I can see, Ellen, why 
you may have lacked any kind of bringing up. A good 
thing, maybe, if you’ve escaped being influenced at all. ” 

Bogert bellowed his joy. “I never beat her unless 
she deserves it, do I, Ellen?” 

“The trouble is, my dear,” and the grandmother 


BREAKING AWAY 


51 


scrutinized her with a frowning benignity, “that the 
family ain’t much to go on as far as behavior is concerned. 
Here I was, a darn good Presbyterian hen who hatched 
two wild ducks. Imagine! Never could do much 
with them. If you’re another, it’s to be expected. ” 

Jo Ellen was chuckling. 

“Generally I’m quite tame,” she said. 

“ Generally. My wild ducks were tame enough most of 
the time—stupidly tame, I’ll say. It’s the wild spots 
that make the trouble. ” 

A white figure appeared in the doorway. 

“How do you think I can sleep,” complained Jo Ellen’s 
mother, “with you people gassing here at this rate?” 

“As usual,” retorted the grandmother, “it’s Ben 
Bogert’s noise. I wish you’d go to bed, Ben. ” 

“That’s it, put it on me.” 

Grandmother Bogert had her way. She wanted to 
talk with Jo Ellen, and before the moon had left them 
completely in shadow much had been said, in suitably 
modulated tones. Jo Ellen liked to hear her talk, but 
the grandmother’s steady, listening look, when Jo Ellen’s 
turn came, sometimes made the granddaughter a bit 
nervous. At the time the maternal grandfather died 
he was foreman of a foundry in San Francisco. When 
his wife went East in the period of Jo Ellen’s babyhood, 
he had complained that he couldn’t get away. Moreover, 
the expense for two would be prohibitively heavy, he 
thought. Thus it came about that Jo Ellen never saw 
her mother’s father, who had put all his savings into 
a land enterprise that failed, and saw the fading of his 
Great Dream. His wife, after writing a brief letter 
telling of his death (it was as if she were hurrying toward 
the next thing to be done), accepted a friend’s intercession 
and became manager of a millinery shop in Seattle. 

“I never thought I’d go East again,” she told Jo 
Ellen. “I guess I never really wanted to very much. 
After you get used to the Coast—anyway, I haven’t 



52 


JO ELLEN 


had the kind of a job that lets you gallivant any. IVe 
had to stick to it and put off and put off getting on to 
see you people. When your mother wrote that Ben was 
down with typhoid it was about the worst time for me. 
Just a rotten time. Then, after a little, I got to think¬ 
ing it over and told the outfit I was off it for a month orso. 
Loud cries of distress. The old girl was firm. Packed my 
grip and lit out. Had the luck to strike an awfully good 
summer excursion rate. And here's dear old grandma.” 

“You’re so young for a grandmother,” said Jo Ellen. 
She meant it. 

“Fifty-five isn’t so thundering young,” returned 
Grandmother Bogert. And this appeared to suggest 
an idea. She leaned forward to point it out. “Did you 
ever see a mother in the movies? She’s always seventy- 
four. Grandmothers are ninety-six. Seems when they 
breed for the camera they start late. ” 

ii 

The allusion to the movies had an echo; but it was more 
important to Jo Ellen that another subject introduced 
during that end-of-the-evening talk should strongly 
impress the visitor. 

“When they get to wanting something,” Grandmother 
Bogert said at noon dinner the next day, “It’s a good 
notion to let them have it, unless it’s explosive or poi¬ 
sonous. Of course, they may be sorry they got what 
they wanted. That happens right along. But they have 
to swallow their medicine and keep it down if they can. 
I think this child’ll have to have her fling. If she wants 
to get to work I think she ought to be at it.” 

“So she’s been loading you up,” said Josephine 
Rewer, with an irritated inflection. 

“ I put her through the third degree. Didn’t know what 
I might strike. She couldn’t help herself, unless she 
was going to be a liar. ” 

“I tell Jo Ellen-” began Bogert. 



BREAKING AWAY 


53 


“Of course you would, Ben,” said his mother. 

“If you’d held me at school I might have amounted 
to something. ” 

“Shucks!” Ben received a sarcastic glance. “Held 
you! I had a sweet time trying. What could I do—lug 
you to school by the collar and hold you there with a 
gun in your back?” 

‘ ‘You know what I mean-” 

“I don’t know what you mean. You were bound to 
chuck the books and I chucked you into a job. I was 
mighty glad it was a hard one. ” 

“Well, suppose that’s all so. A girl’s different—I 
tell her that. ” 

“She isn’t different. She gets to wanting just the 
same. Go on supporting her and she’ll get the habit. 
She’ll want to be kept. By the look of her that wouldn’t 
amuse her at all. She might be sorry she didn’t grab 
all the schooling that came her way. I can’t say. Every¬ 
body’s sorry about something. You haven’t invented a 
way, have you, of keeping people from being sorry? 
I’ll tell you one thing: We’re maddest of all afterward 
about the things we were cheated out of, things we 
wanted and didn’t get—things we didn't do.” 

“Pretty risky preaching,” remarked Josephine Rewer, 
without looking toward her daughter. 

“What I think—” began Jo Ellen. 

“Yes!” Her grandmother slapped the table. “What 
you think. It’s your life we’re talking about. Why 
shouldn’t you have a look-in?” 

“ I don’t want-” Jo Ellen started in another way. 

“O you’re not butting in. I tell you it’s your game. 
Go to it. ” 

The challenge was embarrassing. Moreover, Jo Ellen 
was conscious of her mother’s irritation. Accepting 
the advantage of even this authoritative support would 
be pretty cheap. And it wouldn’t pay. The older 
voice had spoken. Better to let it go at that. 




54 


JO ELLEN 


“Eve said it enough.” 

“Good Lord! Some people are shrewd! Notice that, 
Jo? Won’t be pushed. She’ll get on. ” 

“Really, I have peeved about it a great deal,” Jo 
Ellen added. 

“Shrewd as the devil!” exclaimed Grandmother 
Bogert. 

Suddenly Uncle Ben was on his feet. Inevitably he 
reached this position rather violently and his sister 
turned with a formula of remonstrance. 

Bogert, his head cocked eagerly, ignored the protest. 
His eyes were holding fast to something visible beyond 
the windows. 

“Can you beat that?” 

Billy scrambled to a point of vantage. 

An oddly dressed row of figures, including a girl in 
white and a tall man in dress clothes with top hat, 
straggled along the path. 

“ They’re going to make movies. Down by the boats. ” 

“ Who told you that? ” 

“They were around, fixing how they’re going to do 
it.” Billy acquired a quick excitement. “Can I have 
my dessert, Ma? ” 

“Eat your dinner.” 

“But Ma-” 

“You can watch them all the afternoon,” said Jose¬ 
phine Rewer, with a poorly imitated calmness. Her 
glance kept wandering to the window. 

Billy squirmed. It was plain that Jo Ellen and Uncle 
Ben lost all appetite. 

“We’ll leave the dishes,” remarked Grandmother 
Bogert definitely. 

in 

The making of movies was new to Jo Ellen. An exotic 
look in the painted faces, and the elaborate artifices of 
the game gave her a first feeling of vast fascination. To 
watch the familiar scene undergo transfigurement by a 



BREAKING AWAY 


55 


mere substitution in human figures, aroused a kind of 
awe. When you wanted to laugh you somehow didn’t 
but stood instead with your breath coming quickly. 

The natives came as close as seemed to be permitted. 
Jo Ellen was well to the fore. Her mother, with Uncle 
Ben and Grandmother, took a more cautious position. 
Billy wriggled on the limb of a maple with Morris 
Meyer. There were several groups of the actor people. 
The camera man, alternately mopping his shiny face 
and lighting a fresh cigarette, was reinforced by young 
men with reflectors. Others of an obscure relationship 
hovered beyond. 

It was possible to know that the stocky man, with a 
taller actor person beside him under a tree, was the direc¬ 
tor, and it was he who ejaculated, in something greatly 
less than his directing voice, “Lord! What a type!” 

; > When the taller man swung about, Jo Ellen knew that 
she was the subject. She glanced away, but held her 
ground. 

“Don’t get to be like Mullen, ” said the actor, “always 
discovering wonders outside the cast.” 

“Did you ever see green eyes that carried like that?” 
persisted the director. 

“If you say so, they’re a marvel. As for me, I’m 
through with eyes. ” 

A voice piped from somewhere. It seemed to imply a 
re-established readiness. 

“Camera!” yelled the director. His voice rang with a 
tense, warning kind of clearness. 

As the camera man began to twirl the handle, the 
obvious hero, carrying a girl who lay limp in his arms, 
staggered into view against a distant shadowed space. 

“Now the stumble!” shouted the director, “and up 
again—everything limp , Miss Tammil. You’re dead 
to the world. Now Carey.” 

The tall actor strode stealthily into range, noting 
the other figures and halting. 



56 


JO ELLEN 


“Not into the moonlight until they pass that bush— 
now—the glance backward. Slowing down, O’Brien— 
the branch gets you in the face—to the right. You 
now see Carey—on your knees —the gun —hold it! Hold 
it! Arms folded, Carey —hold it! . . . ” 

The camera man moved for the close-up of O’Brien 
and Miss Tammil. First came repeated experiments in 
Miss Tammil’s awakening from the swoon. The director 
gave vivid suggestions. To see that broad-shouldered 
person, on his back in the grass, lift his head as Miss 
Tammil must lift hers, raise a hand to his lips, giving a 
feminine curve in the flexing of his hairy wrist, to see 
him accent the gestures of weakness, above all, to see 
that no one laughed during this fascinating parody, was 
a thrilling matter to Jo Ellen. 

It occurred to her that she would like to be carried, 
with a certain bold tenderness such as O’Brien showed. 
She was sure that O’Brien could have done the thing 
without staggering if occasion required. The staggering 
was part of the play. There must have been something 
exhausting just before. But opening her eyes there on 
the ground, and dropping her cheek against his arm half 
a dozen times, under instruction as audible as a towboat 
whistle—that wouldn’t have pleased her at all. She 
would have felt foolish. Evidently Miss Tammil didn’t 
feel that way about it. Jo Ellen winced when things 
were repeated and the realness was spoiled. She always 
had an intensely relieved feeling whenever the director 
shouted “Camera!” and the man at the machine actually 
began to grind, his face shining, the eyebrows screwed 
tight, the cigarette drooping at a queer angle. 

Myrtle Fleck found Jo Ellen while the picture people 
were making the scene on the wobbly bridge that con¬ 
nected the Tice houseboat with the shore. It was here 
that the tall man lost his top hat in the struggle with 
O’Brien and was finally thrown over. . . . 

“Wouldn’t you love to be in it?” exclaimed Myrtle. 



BREAKING AWAY 


57 


“Of course,” said Jo Ellen. “But not the doing it 
over—the practicing. ” 

Myrtle giggled. “Sometimes that would be best of 
all, don’t you think? Like in his arms. A kiss—that 
has to be practiced over and over. Getting good money 
for kissing! Wouldn’t that sort of—” 

“You’d feel silly, with that man roaring and looking 
terrible. ” 

“/ wouldn’t,” said Myrtle. “I’d let him bawl. I 
don’t think he means half he says, anyway. Don’t you 
suppose they sometimes ask people in when there’s to 
be a crowd?” 

“ A crowd? I’d like to be in a crowd. ” 

“And we’d see it at the Palace.” 

“Sure.” 

Hope of a crowd was not supported by the unintel¬ 
ligible progress of the play. There was, however, no 
moment without something to watch. For one thing, 
the make-up of the faces (the heat imposed repeated 
reinforcement) was both enchanting and disquieting to 
Jo Ellen. The paint gave an exciting accentuation to 
the romantic effect, as of a world in which life burned 
with a special fire. A smile or a frown, teeth, eyes—the 
simplest glance—took on a magnified meaning that made 
Jo Ellen quiver now and then and held her in a kind 
of delicious trance, through which raced streakings of 
something that left her uneasy. 

A girl with dark hair and a foreign look, who belonged 
in some way with the man in the dress suit, and who wore 
an amazing robe of deep blue, with an Oriental neck 
chain, awaited her time at the edge of a clearing. She 
sat casually, hands clasped over her knees. Beside her 
was a man without make-up who smoked a pipe. Jo 
Ellen thought she looked like a vampish sort of queen, 
or maybe a princess. 

“Gawd!” muttered the queenly one, “did you ever 
know such rotten weather to work in?” 


58 


JO ELLEN 


“Only in the East,” said the man. “The Coast is 
the place. ” 

“O I’ve struck it hot enough on the Coast!” 

“But not heavy like this. Heavy. And this is a punk 
location, if you ask me.” 

“I don’t ask you, dearie. You never have a decent 
word for a location. But I suppose it is punk. Harden 
picked it. What difference does it make? This company 
never seems to land the goods. What’s Nellie beefing 
about?” 

“Just beefing. Nothing at all. You can’t satisfy 
her.” 

“She makes me tired, that smarty.” 

“Say, there’s one of the natives here—did you see 
that girl with the red hair?” 

“Go on. I’m listening to your ravings.” 

“Honest, she’s a lulu.” 

“Are you telling her? She’s right behind us.” 

“Miss Rydelir 

This was the director* and the girl in the blue robe 
arose briskly. 

“You’ve just come over from the casino,” the director 
was saying. “You’ve missed the attache . You suspect 
him. You come—right there—looking toward the 
boats and back again. The scarf—you’ve got the scarf? ” 

“Yes. ...” 

The rehearsal of the scene moved forward. Twice the 
Rydell girl emerged and retired under detailed direction 
that seemed to be picking to pieces the very fibres of an 
emotion, all for Miss Rydell to put together again. This 
putting them together again was evidently very difficult. 
When Miss Rydell had done it, the director wanted her 
to do it again. At the first suspicion of the attache and 
the stealthy searching look Jo Ellen had held her breath. 
The sunlight, which would be moonlight on the screen, 
splashed the amber smoothness of the girl’s neck and 
shoulders, and Jo Ellen thought her charming. Very 


BREAKING AWAY 


59 


likely the charm was supposed to be rather wicked. Prob¬ 
ably vampish. ^ Whatever name you gave it, you 
couldn’t help tingling at the look of the girl. But when 
the director had suspected the attache and had been 
cumbrously stealthy, and when Miss Rydell had without 
complaint stolen forth for the third time, Jo Ellen 
began to think she looked silly. 

“Camera!” 

At last the camera began to mutter and the queenly 
figure entered for the fourth time with the gesture of 
catlike caution. 

“Cut!” roared the director, as if in great pain. 

What was wrong? There was a pause in which the 
mystification of most of the spectators remained complete. 

Then Jo Ellen saw Emma Traub, halted, in that atti¬ 
tude of cataleptic rigidity so characteristic of her embar¬ 
rassed moments, not a dozen feet from the focal point 
of the scene. No explanation, early or late, ever made 
clear how she could have managed to effect so dramatic 
a blunder. Her theory as laid before Jo Ellen was that 
she thought they were doing the boats, and, coming 
by one of her short cuts through the bushes, had walked 
straight into the spotlight of romance. Sight of the 
camera and the despairing shrug of the director sent 
her scuttling out of range, a comic bewilderment dis¬ 
torting her face. 

The bewilderment survived the escape. It seemed to 
be twitching in her when she saw Jo Ellen, and had 
added strides that brought her lank body to Jo Ellen’s 
side. 

“Thought I’d find you,” she whispered. “There’s 
something to tell you. ” 

“To tell me... ?” 

Emma Traub bent close, assuring herself, obliquely, 
that Myrtle had moved away. “I found out the dick 
didn’t get him. ” 

The make-believe drama was obliterated at a stroke. 


60 


JO ELLEN 


“How . . . ?” 

“Your friend got away.” 

Jo Ellen gave a fragmentary laugh. “Your friend.” 
It sounded especially funny in this setting. Also it 
carried the color of other considerations. “I’m glad 
he got away,” she said. 

“Yes. Of course. ” Emma’s way of saying this might 
have indicated that she was glad, too; not fervently, 
but perhaps as a matter of human interest, as frustrating 
bulls and dicks, as in a large way contributing to various 
immediate satisfactions. She would not be thinking 
about the distrust, or would have taken it for granted. 
Apparently other considerations were more vivid to her. 
Jo Ellen had noticed from the beginning a kind of vehe¬ 
ment interest which had the oddity of everything that 
belonged to Emma Traub. It was not merely the gossip 
sort of interest such as showed in a person like old 
Lot Mallin, for instance. It was queerer; something down 
deep. Jo Ellen concluded that it was part of the fact 
that Emma herself was queer. If she was not hopelessly 
queer why did she stand there, mostly on one foot, as 
though entangled, as though the shedding of her bit of 
news did not dismiss the matter? 

Jo Ellen resented being held. The partnership of 
secrecy might remain, but it irked her to feel that she 
was really involved, that the Traub woman should have 
the privilege or obligation of haunting her. 

“Well,” she said, with a sound of brushing it all away, 
“that’s that.” 

Emma Traub’s loose lips tightened. 

“That’s what?” 

“That’s the end of it,” said Jo Ellen. 

“You think so?” 

It was so like Emma Traub not to let anything either 
mysterious or unpleasant be brushed away, that Jo 
Ellen remained unsuspicious of the withheld or the 
impending until she had glanced at Emma’s face. 


BREAKING AWAY 61 

“How do you know about this?” was Jo Ellen’s 
left-over question. 

“Asked him.” 

“Asked Stan Lamar?” 

Emma nodded. Seemingly she was not trying to 
astonish. She was squirming through to a destination 
in her own way. 

“How could . . . ?” 

“He’s around.” This was like a sullen admission. 

“Here?” 

“I saw him. I could see he knew me. ‘They didn’t 
get you,’ I said. ‘No,’ he said. I says, ‘You’re pretty 
nervy to come, in the daytime, showing yourself.’ 
‘That’s squared,’ he says. ‘They’re off that. How did 
you know they wanted me?’ O I knew what he wanted 
to know! Did you tell me. That’s what he was after. 
‘The dick asked me if I saw you,’ I said. ‘And I lied to 
’im good.’ ‘Obliged to you,’ he said. ‘Yes,’ I says, ‘and 
you’re obliged to her , too. See? But you leave her alone. 
Get that straight. Leave her alone, or I’ll—well, I 
dropped ’im there and dug out. ‘Wait a minute,’ he 
says, but I dug out.” 

“I don’t see . . . ” Jo Ellen began. 

Emma prodded her with three stiffened fingers. “ He’ll 
find you some way. Understand? He’ll see you. That’s 
what he’s here for. I know. An’ I’m saying to you, 
don’t be a fool. Drop him. A crook’s a crook. If you 
get mixed up, no matter how good you are—see?—no 
matter, you’ll be sorry. Sorry.” 

Jo Ellen laughed. “Don’t worry about me. I sha’n’t 
see him.” 

“He’ll see you. He’ll find the way. And you want 
to see him. ” 

Jo Ellen flushed. “How do you dare to say that?” 

“I dare,” muttered Emma Traub, standing very close. 
“I don’t mean you’re lying. You think you don’t 
want to see him but—but I know—” 


62 


JO ELLEN 


“You go right on knowing,” cried Jo Ellen and turned 
abruptly away. 

By a straight line homeward, away from the scene of 
the movies, she hurried, w r ith a little flame of anger 
burning under her private air of indifference. The 
thing to do while she thought it over was to be away 
from everything, behind the security of the house. It 
would be just as well to think out what she would do if 
she ever met him anywhere. She didn’t admit to herself 
that she had ever done this before. 

Now that Emma Traub had given a kind of nervous 
nearness to the possibility, and had taken the liberty 
of telling her how she really felt, it was necessary to do 
some downright thinking. Emma might be queer; it 
might be indispensable to her to have suspicions; but 
her way of seeming to know sinister things had to be 
taken into account. 

At home one could suspend all possibilities for a 
breathing spell. If they found her there she could have 
a headache—though she never had a headache. . . . 

When she heard the swishing sound she knew, as un- 
debatably as if she had herself arranged and impelled it, 
that Stan Lamar was plunging through, at a sharp angle, 
toward the path. 

iv 

He did not break into the path as if to intercept her. 
He seemed to know that she would pause and he drew 
up beside her, hat in hand, with a look that rather 
repeated her own way of verifying an earlier impression, 
save that his look was more than curious. There was^a 
glint in it. 

“ Seems like trailing you, ” he said. “ I did see you go. ” 

“Why should you trail me?” she asked. She was still 
in the heat of the resentment aroused by Emma Traub, 
and there w r as a fresh resentment in which she felt 
accused of a complicity. He could think she had rushed 
off to meet him. 


BREAKING AWAY 


63 


“I wanted ...” 

Was it a pretended embarrassment? She had built 
up a picture of him that had no possible diffidence in it. 
Yet here he was, fumbling. 

“I wanted to thank you,” he said. “No harm in that.” 

“I didn’t do much.” 

“O yes, you did. You sure were a good sport.” 

“I didn’t tell.” She wanted to get this out, whatever 
happened. She might run away in a moment and it 
must be said first. 

He nodded. “Of course not. I guess we know who 
did blab. Poor devil, she was frightened. ” 

“No,” protested Jo Ellen. “She didn’t tell. I saw 
her afterward. ” 

“Same thing, though. After seeing her he thought 
he knew. He wouldn’t have been so sure later on. 
Anyway, I saw him coming—strolling along. The 
other chance looked better than that. Never thought 
of the luck of you and the boat. But that isn’t what 
I wanted to tell you. ” 

Jo Ellen was silent. 

“I wanted to tell you that I wasn’t lying to you in a 
tight place. The police crowd had me wrong.” 

“You mean, you hadn’t done-” 

“It was another man. I knew it would come out. 
When the time was right I went straight to them and 
laid my cards down. They’re a dirty bunch. It might 
not have gone. But I was clean on the thing. It was a 
little spite higher up. Do you believe me?” 

“What difference does that make?” 

He turned his eyes away from her for a moment and 
thrust a fist against the bark of a tree beside him. “A 
fellow might care, you know. He might.” He faced 
her again. “Suppose you had been in my fix. Wouldn’t 
you care?” 

“I don’t know,” answered Jo Ellen. “If anybody 
didn’t believe me, I think I’d let them go ahead.” 



64 


JO ELLEN 


“Maybe you wouldn’t if you—” He kicked at the 
roots of the tree, wrenched his hat, then astonished 
Jo Ellen by laughing softly. “If anybody had told 
me I’d do this—you never know what you will do, 
do you?” 

“I don’t understand you,” said Jo Ellen. 

“That’s just like other people. I thought you were 
different from other people-” 

“You didn’t come all the way over here to tell me 
that, did you?” 

“That’s the funny thing. I did. And I feel like a 
fool. Does that mean that you are different?” 

Jo Ellen looked at him frankly. “I made a secret 
out of meeting you. Guess I sort of promised that. 
Sometimes I wish I hadn’t. ” 

The movement she remembered came into his lips; 
with it came a sign of his being checked, as if there might 
be more than one answer. In the end his annoyance 
was not hidden. 

“If all of Inwood has to know, go to it.” 

Jo Ellen’s instant gesture of turning away from him 
had equally quick effect in his half-extended hand. 

“Excuse that, won’t you?” He moved a step. “You 
caught me there, and I was rough. Do anything you 
think’s fair. ” 

“Fair . . . ?” 

“To me. Is it the fun of telling it, or what?” 

“A secret’s a kind of a nuisance when there’s no use 
for it. I don’t think you’d care now . . . when nobody’s 
chasing you.” 

He had a hard smile for this. 

“I see,” he said. “You think I have no feelings 
when the police are out of it. ” 

“I mean I’d think better about you if it wasn’t 
secret. ” 

He looked puzzled, but added quickly, “In that case 
the secret’s off. ” 



BREAKING AWAY 65 

“I don’t mean that I’m going to rush and tell it. It’s 
only-” 

“I know, ” he said. “ Your thinking better about me’s 
the important thing—to me, I mean. ” He halted 
with this much, because he detected again the movement 
of leaving him. “Why do you want to get away?” 

“You ask a lot of questions,” declared Jo Ellen, 
standing very straight. The movie director was now 
using a megaphone, and the voice rolled up from behind 
these two with a peculiar booming intensity. The echo 
of the sounds seemed to quiver in Jo Ellen. 

“A question is what all this is about. I came up here 
to ask you a question. ” 

He spoke with a quiet that made Jo Ellen uneasy. 
She could not have said why, but it had the feel of some¬ 
thing that threatened; and she knew that she would 
never forget the way he looked: handsomer than the 
picture that came whenever she had thought about 
the meeting in the empty house; with a kind of bright 
powerfulness that showed in every movement of him. 

“. . .to ask you a question, ” he repeated. 

“Haven’t you asked it?” 

“No.” 

“Maybe you’d better,” said Jo Ellen, “if you came 
up here to do it. ” £ 

“What started me was wanting to know whether you 
were going to keep on thinking about me as a dirty 
crook. ” 

“I don’t know what I’m going to think.” 

“What do you think now?” 

“You’re foolish to ask me that.” 

“Why?” 

“Because I think very likely there’s something wrong 
about you. ” 

“Will you give me a chance to prove that I’m not 
a crook, if that’s what you mean?” 

“Giveyou . . . ? 



66 


JO ELLEN 


“I know. You must think I’m either crooked or 
crazy. I’ve done a lot of things, but this is the craziest. 
It didn’t seem so crazy when I first thought about it— 
about coming to find you. And you stand there blocking 
me. That’s it. I never met a girl that—you just got 
me that day. And that’ll make you laugh. If it had 
come right this time, I suppose I might have said that 
so it wouldn’t be a flop. You win. You’ve had fun 
with me, as if ” 

“Good-by,” said Jo Ellen. 

He stepped into the path with a gesture that implied 
a controlled wish to touch her. 

“Damn you!” he flung out. “How did you do it? 
How did you-” 

Jo Ellen felt a burning at her temples. “You’re 
talking like a crook now.” 

“ That’s the way. A crook. Tell them all. A crook— 
who came around crying like a kid—wanting—you’ll 
be square up against it trying to figure what he did 
want. A crook. Give them that. ” 

She slipped- past him. He swung about and stood 
tightly, watching her leaping pace. She did not look 
back. 

v 

If he could have seen her on the porch, peering, for 
the length of a dozen seconds, like a nervous bird; 
if he could have seen her behind window's, front and 
back, at a mirror in the living room, in the kitchen 
gulping a cup of water; if he could have seen her rocking 
rapidly in the oldest chair, with eyes fixed and hands 
wandering, some of the mystery w r ould have gone out 
of his speculations, though perhaps a deeper mystery 
would have entered in. 

That period before the family came back w r as short in 
minutes but long in emotional excursions. Jo Ellen 
wanted to think, but feelings came, crow'ding one another 
in a disorderly scramble. She ran a second time to the 




BREAKING AWAY 


67 


mirror, to remind herself of what it was he looked at 
when he stood there squirming and fumbling. When 
he could take hold of her, he knew what to do and how 
to do it. When he couldn’t take hold of her, he was stupid. 
He had come to Inwood on the chance of seeing her in 
some way such as the way that happened. If it were in 
a story the short of it would have been that he had fallen 
in love with her—fallen in love with her on a few minutes* 
acquaintance, or when he came to think about it, which 
would be a silly thing to believe. And yet he hadn’t 
quite said this. He only tried to say it. Maybe it was 
true that a liar would have said it better. Maybe not. 
If she had helped him he might have said it so well 
that it would have sounded altogether like a trick. 

Whichever way you looked at the thing it was aston¬ 
ishing, astonishing enough to keep your face hot and 
quivery. Anybody coming home and seeing you would 
know that something astonishing had happened, and 
expect you to tell all about it, and that would be as 
hard as rehearsing in the movies. You couldn’t make 
anybody understand how you could listen to him at 
all if you even thought he might be a crook. And they 
wouldn’t know how he looked, and about the eyes, 
or the voice either. Really there were two voices; 
perhaps there were two of him in other ways. ' ' • i 

There was only one of Marty. Did the two of S^tan 
Lamar mean that one of them was not real? 

Jo Ellen wondered if there were two of herself. Did 
Stan Lamar go away thinking there were two of her? 
If it was the one of her he met in the Simms house and 
afterward in the boat who “got” him, how different 
was the one he met to-day? If she was really the same 
on both days, wasn’t it likely that he was really the 
same on both days ? Was the difference in what happened 
to you? 

She went back to Emma Traub’s remark—about a 
crook’s woman. Was a man only one kind to his woman? 


68 


JO ELLEN 


There was another thing. Emma evidently didn’t 
mean wife. Woman and wife. Wife was a good deal 
easier to understand. Woman was a lot more compli¬ 
cated. There was a simple way you got to be wife. 
“His woman.” That was rather terrific. Smashing. 
It was hard to see how that could happen. . . . 

Imagine what Uncle Ben, for instance, would say about 
“his woman.” People didn’t talk about such things 
at all—unless they were like Emma Traub. Anyway, 
there was a sadness in it. When you thought about it, 
there was a gray color, with fiery flashes, as well as a 
sound that made you shrink and wonder. . . . 

All this time something was shining through. She 
had felt it when she got out of bed in the morning. She 
saw it when she was watching the actors. It came to 
her when Lamar was there, and it made a difference now 
when she knew that presently the family would be back 
and everything would seem to be as it was before. 

She felt a lot older. 

The feeling began when her mother accepted without 
comment the joke about adventure, and suddenly 
there was a wide horizon. It was a strangely stronger 
feeling now. Of course, it was bound to come to you. 
Mostly it came not because of what happened to you, 
but because of what you saw when you looked out. 

VI 

Perhaps the grandmother was largely responsible for 
this feeling of being older, which outlasted the night, 
and other nights; and Jo Ellen found that there could 
be something not altogether comfortable about it. 
It took off a sort of weight, but also it kept asking you, 
asking you, tremendously. 

Grandmother was to have stayed two weeks, but 
postponed her going. She went downtown to give 
New York a look-over. Incidentally, she had met some 
of the people known to her by business correspondence. 


BREAKING AWAY 


69 


New York was pretty old-fashioned in some ways, yet 
oddly, it was less old-fashioned in fashions than in other 
things. She admitted that in jazzing up hats they gave 
the Coast a hard run. Some dealer had thought she 
might be very useful in handling Western buyers, and 
his advances were under consideration. 

“Lord knows, I think it’s an awful town,” said Mrs. 
Bogert. “If they could get a live man from the Coast 
to run it ...” 

Uncle Ben suggested that the place was full of live 
men from the Coast. 

“Let them put one of them in to run it—and catch 
him before he’s spoiled.” 

“You seem to think—” Uncle Ben ventured. 

“O you're spoiled,” declared his mother. “They’ve 
got you filed down. I’ll bet in your job you’re as meek 
as a movie actor.” 

Uncle Ben bristled. “Ah! but don’t you see, that’s 
organization. That’s the way things are put over. 
Suppose those actors we were looking at—say, they 
haven’t made an I. W. W. of you out there, have they?” 

“Don’t talk nonsense. New York’s just slow. Full 
of ruts , and meek people crawling in them. I tell you, 
it’s about the meekest burg—the only real men I’ve 
seen are the traffic cops. ” 

“All Irish,” said Bogert. 

“Be thankful for that,” his mother retorted. 

Bogert clenched a fist. “Damned good actors, when 
they have a director.” 

“You say that as if you were mighty wise. Being 
directed’s exactly what they don't like. Anyway, 
they’re keeping the punch. ” 

“Oh, quit your scrapping,” appealed Jo Ellen’s 
mother. 

To convince his critics that he was quite in shape to 
go back to the office, Bogert turned from various tink- 
erings to an ambitious extension of the porch. Mrs. 


70 JO ELLEN 

Bogert was not greatly impressed by her son’s abilities 
as a carpenter. 

“If I must say it, Ben, things you make always seem 
wobbly. ” 

“I don’t pretend to be a professional,” snorted Bogert. 

“I’d say you had a rather sketchy style, that’s all. 
You’re probably all right on your proper job or they 
wouldn’t be so looney to have you back. ” 

“On my proper job,” said Bogert, “I’m a wonder.” 

It chanced that the Monday morning which saw 
Bogert off at eight o’clock upon his old itinerary brought 
Grandmother Bogert’s announcement of her intention 
to stay in New York. Since both Jo Ellen and her mother 
were astonished, it became evident that they had not 
taken seriously the expressions of debate which had been 
dropped from time to time. Both daughter and grand¬ 
daughter expected that at the last the call of the Coast 
would prove more potent than any new blandishments. 

“Heaven knows the town’s no attraction,” said 
Martha Bogert. “A horrible mix-up. No idea about itself. 
Most idiotic climate in the world. But there seems to be a 
chance of something rather good in a business way. ” 

“Great,” cried Josephine Rewer. “You’ll stay and 
grow up with the country!” 

“None of your sarcasms,” grinned Martha. “I’ve 
got twenty years of hustle in me. Maybe thirty.” 

Jo Ellen added her squeal of excitement. “There are 
terrible temptations here, Grandma!” 

“You be quiet!” snapped the grandmother. “See 
that you mind your steps when you get to work. ” 

“We’ll face the old town together,” ventured Jo 
Ellen. It was another experimental observation, 
accompanied by scrutiny of her mother. Nothing 
unpleasant happened. 

VII 

When it had actually begun, Jo Ellen’s business school 
enterprise had less of novelty than she had expected. 


BREAKING AWAY 


71 


It was, after all, but another sort of going to school, 
and since she was able to enter before the end of August 
the separation from the old Broadway schoolhouse 
brought no spectacular moment. Yet there was a 
pronounced effect of going forth. The old school lay 
across lots. The new held a prophecy of downtown 
and noisy vistas of adventure, where life was different. 
It escaped being another Broadway school by a short 
turn from a corner. The look of it left situation to seem 
unimportant, for it was but a floor in a shabby building 
given over largely to apartments. Jo Ellen stepped off 
her train at One Hundred and Twenty-Fifth Street, 
where you see Riverside Drive making its steel straddle 
of the crosstown thoroughfare to the Hudson, and where 
you have the escalator to mitigate the height of the 
airway that becomes the subway. 

The business school was managed by a Mrs. Miffling. 
There was a shadowy Mr. Miffling, a meager man with 
a husky voice who had the effect of belonging elsewhere, 
and who only appeared long enough to be admonished 
not to forget something. Mrs. Miffling was assisted in 
the teaching by a young woman named Crowe. Miss 
Crowe usually had a cold. At the beginning she acknowl¬ 
edged one of those summer colds that hold on. She 
seemed always to have been doing whatever she did for 
a long time. Each piece of instruction sounded like 
an echo of an earlier statement of the same thing and as 
if it were a pity the thing wouldn’t stick. Accumulated 
stupidities appeared to trail along with her patience, 
which at times w T as almost beautiful, but which could 
make you feel inferior. She was neat enough, but it was 
painful to see her trim her finger nails with a large pair 
of shears. 

Jo Ellen was sure she would never like shorthand. 
Its precisions were exasperating. The little strokes had 
a puttering tightness that made her feel the need to 
climb over the desk and do a cart wheel. Tee— dee — 



n 


JO ELLEN 


chay— djay. It was maddening. And they had to 
lean just so. It was as if your hand were put in a vise. 
When you thought they leaned right. Miss Crowe said 
they didn’t. The way they should lean, as illustrated by 
the hand of Miss Crowe that was not engaged with the 
handkerchief, was really no different at ail, but you had 
to pretend that it was and go on. Pee— bee —eff— vee — 
kay— gay. Months of this, perhaps, with not a word 
yet about business. 

In one of her first legitimate pauses Jo Ellen recalled 
the despairing ejaculation of Uncle Ben. 

“Great snakes! Another stenographer!” 

He seemed to feel that Manhattan Island swarmed 
with them. “You can’t get around,” he said, “without 
stepping on one. ” 

It was impossible to guess the manner of business 
person he would have thought it conceivable that she 
should be. He never was able to think about it con¬ 
nectedly. A situation would have had to be invented to 
fit his conception of her. She was, in his opinion, smart 
enough for anything, but when he sought to visualize an ac¬ 
tual setting he was frustrated. Actual settings seemed to 
fall into brutally arbitrary classifications. When you came 
to think of it, where could you put an abstractly smart girl ? 

It turned out that Jo Ellen had talked with a good 
many girls. Her mother had thought things out. And 
Grandmother Bogert had been emphatic. “Unless 
you put her in some sort of store, she has to be able to 
take letters. ” Uncle Ben remained obstinately vague to 
the last, and submitted to the idea of the business 
school and the pothooks in a bitter silence. 

At this stage there were nine pupils in the school. Five 
of them were Jewish girls. A frank recognition of the 
proportion was one of the things that struck Jo Ellen 
as a novelty. When some one used the expression, 
“four Christian girls,” one of the four that were not 
Jewish spoke up. 



BREAKING AWAY 


73 


“I’m not a Christian.” 

“Why—what are you? You’re not Jewish, are you?” 
asked the littlest girl, who had jet black hair and curi¬ 
ously heavy eyebrows. 

“No, but I’m not Christian either.” 

This made a laugh. 

“Then ichat are you?” 

“Nothing at all.” 

“Listen,” said the littlest girl, “you can’t be nothing 
a -tall. ” 

“A Gentile,” said one of the Jewish girls. 

“My father’s an agnostic.” 

“A what?” 

“Agnostic.” 

“Speak American,” said the littlest girl. “Ag -what?' 1 

“Anyway,” remarked the tall Jewish girl named 
Baum, “when the ad says "Christian’ you can answer it. ” 

“ I might, ” said the agnostic’s daughter. 

“It’ll only mean,” said Clara Dawes, the one who 
had a small birthmark on her chin and wore glasses, 
“that they don’t want a Jewish girl.” 

“Right-o, ” said Miss Baum. “They have to have 
Christian girls to keep the work going on Yom Kippur. ” 

This was obscure to Jo Ellen, and the littlest girl, 
who suspected the fact, undertook to make it clear. 

“You know,” she said, “when they have all Jewish 
girls and Yom Kippur comes there’s no one to take 
dictation. ” 

Jo Ellen indicated that she now understood perfectly. 
Lessons on the typewriter were far less trying than the 
shorthand. Jo Ellen advanced rapidly with her typing, 
despite the finger exactions. With two fingers she could, 
she was certain, have jumped ahead toward a fine 
facility. To use all the necessary fingers in just the 
right way was like going back to that awful winter of 
piano lessons. Mrs. Miffling felt obliged to say (Miss 
Crowe had a different way of saying the same thing) 


74 


JO ELLEN 


that it would be better not to be in such a hurry. It 
took just about so long, no matter how smart you were, 
to get to be good. 

“You’ve got to have the foundation,” insisted Mrs. 
Miffling. 

Foundation sounded frightfully heavy to Jo Ellen. 
Probably it was a proper word, but it had a weight in 
itself. And there would be tons and tons of it. However, 
if the littlest girl could carry foundation there was 
nothing to be said. No amount of weight or labor 
could greatly diminish Jo Ellen’s elation or retard an 
eager looking forward to the next turn, the next new 
phase. She would rather have been running toward 
the point to be gained; running or climbing. Sitting at 
a desk doing ing and ish with a pencil, or reviewing the 
typewriter discs and remembering the right finger for 
x made you feel tied. And somewhere, away beyond, 
were huge alluring dramas of sheer action: conflict, 
excitement, and significant men. The murmur of vast 
adventure seemed to drift northward through Broadway 
as from an intricately different Broadway far below. 
Her visions were as vague as Ben Bogert’s, but they drew 
her more imperatively. Every picture filled her mind 
with participations. Sometimes these were vividly real; 
sometimes they were consciously whimsical, as in a 
game. When she saw, from the school window, the ice 
wagon across the street, she wondered how it might feel 
to be weighing ice and carrying the chunks into the 
recesses of strange homes; or if you were an ice-wagon 
horse how it might feel to be eating out of a feed bag 
dangling from a rope that looped behind your ears. 

The school seats were arranged so that windows might 
offer the least possible distraction; but at noontime when 
you were finishing your lunch the street was often an 
entertainment. It was enjoined that Jo Ellen should go 
out for a glass of milk. There was school precedent for 
chocolate soda, and Jo Ellen often yielded to the sug- 


BREAKING AWAY 


75 


gestion. Clare Dawes lived near enough to go home for 
lunch. Miss Baum ate a hearty meal at a noisy little 
restaurant on the next street. The littlest girl had a 
passion for dill pickles and citron cake. 

Jo Ellen liked to use the noon-time margin for a walk 
on the river avenue: dowm past Mile. Hortense’s beauty 
shop, Ricardo’s fruit market, and the long row of apart¬ 
ment houses to the Drive steps and Grant’s Tomb. 
Perhaps there would be a battleship in the river and you 
could think about the war. 

The agnostic’s daughter had theories about the war 
that made it disturbing to bring up that subject. Miss 
Baum, who had worked in a department store and looked 
at things from the mature height of twenty-four years, 
knew ways to get the agnostic’s daughter started. When 
she had started, her face became curiously ugly. W r ith 
feverish eyes she would shout, “It’s a Christian war 
. . . Onward Christian soldiers!” 

Because of some opinion Jo Ellen had ventured to voice, 
Miss Pascoe would not speak to her for three days. There 
was a moment when Jo Ellen thought the Pascoe girl might 
strike her in the face—and there was a pencil in her hand. 

On the fourth day Jo Ellen met the savage stare of 
Miss Pascoe near the river. 

Jo Ellen halted abruptly. 

“If you don’t believe in war,” she said, “what’s 
the use of our quarreling?” 

Miss Pascoe stopped in her tracks. 

“Christian stuff!” She flung this out contemptuously. 

“Seems so funny,” Jo Ellen went on, “to scrap about 
'peace. ” 

“Oh, does it? How clever—and Christian!” And 
Miss Pascoe moved on briskly. 

VIII 

One afternoon Miss Pascoe had trouble with her 
typewriter. Jo Ellen thought she knew what the 


76 


JO ELLEN 


trouble was, and her fingers yearned to make the adjust¬ 
ment. She saw Miss Pascoe rise as if in perplexity, 
look down for a moment at the obstinate machine, then 
leave the room, perhaps to hunt up Miss Crowe, who 
had a mesmeric influence upon typewriters. 

Jo Ellen slipped across to the machine and made a 
hurried jab at one of the screws. She fancied that she 
had accomplished a shrewd bit of magic and that the 
thing would now behave. 

“I see!” came the angry voice of Miss Pascoe from 
the doorway. 

Jo Ellen straightened up. The incredible nastiness of 
the suspicion held Jo Ellen for the space of several 
seconds in which her face grew hot. 

“ If you were a man, ” said Jo Ellen as the other came 
toward her, “it wouldn’t be quite safe for you to throw 
out rotten hints like that. ” 

“Oh, wouldn't it? Well, don’t you consider that at 
all. And it wasn't a hint. It was meant to be plain.” 

“I guess,” said Jo Ellen, her tones not quite steady, 
“you’re just a little beast.” 

She was for turning away at this, but Miss Pascoe 
caught her by the shoulder. Finger nails sank through 
the mesh of her summer tunic. 

“What do you mean, little beast? Listen ...” 

Jo Ellen threw her off with a swing that sent the taut 
figure sharply against a corner of the nearest desk, 
and moved away toward her own machine. Then came 
the pain at the roots of her clutched hair and she could 
hear Miss Pascoe trying to scream the words “You 
. . . can’t ...” and only a whistling sound coming 
through her teeth. Jo Ellen, drawn off her balance, 
dropped backward, and there was a white instant in 
which, from the floor, the world seemed to have capsized. 
In the next instant she was up again and had Miss 
Pascoe by the wrists, pressing her backward toward 
the wall. A kind of shrieking whisper inside her head 


BREAKING AWAY 


77 


seemed to be saying, “I’m fighting!” and nothing was 
clear but the distorted face of the girl opposite her own 
and the swaying motion it made in the struggle. With 
her back against the wall and her hands in custody, 
Miss Pascoe w T as to be challenged to surrender and to 
come to her senses. Jo Ellen retained a coherent notion 
of some such victory. But Miss Pascoe used the wall to 
her advantage by extending her arms wdth a fierceness 
that checked Jo Ellen long enough to give swinging 
room for a series of extraordinarily effective kicks 
against Jo Ellen’s shins. 

The calamity to the shins rather finished Jo Ellen’s 
thinking. She now ceased to have any intention save to 
conquer, as violently as need be, the wriggling creature 
who was inflicting this torture. Unfortunately, loosening 
her hold on Miss Pascoe’s WTists for the purpose of a 
blow, or whatever other impulse may have leapt into 
her hands, offered her opponent another advantage and 
it was seized promptly. One set of armed fingers caught 
Jo Ellen’s cheek, the other sank into her neck, and the 
catlike strategy had its sure results. As she reached for 
Miss Pascoe’s throat Jo Ellen had an impression of 
Miss Baum, at a great distance, shouting something and 
of the littlest girl absurdly trying to separate the 
combatants. . . . From a vastly greater distance there 
was another voice, an authoritative voice . . . evidently 
Mrs. Miffling’s. . . . But nothing of this sort mattered. 
Miss Pascoe went down . . . down for a crashing red 
distance, and Jo Ellen’s knees were on her chest. 

“You brats!” 

This was from Mrs. Miffling ... as if she had found 
two dirty kids mauling each other in a gutter. Her 
anger needed some form of insult and this occurred to 
her. In view of her habitual allusion to the ladies of 
her school, the characterization was to be measured as 
an expression of outrage for which she would afterward 
be particularly regretful. As it happened, her humiliation 


78 


JO ELLEN 


was deepened beyond all measure by the presence of a 
stranger behind her, a fat man, with a handkerchief 
tucked over his collar, who stood fascinated, his lips 
pursed, and his eyebrows lifted in a fantastic astonish¬ 
ment. It is quite doubtful whether he heard Mrs. 
Miffling’s inelegant expression. He was held in a breath¬ 
less concentration that shut out everything but the 
very efficient casting down of Miss Pascoe and the 
picture of the blood-streaked Jo Ellen crouching over 
her. It was Jo Ellen’s red head that focused the scene for 
him. He saw that Jo Ellen stood up, without noticing 
that Miss Pascoe remained on the floor. 

The fat man said to himself—at least he afterward 
insisted that he said to himself—“ There's a girl!” 

He was not interested in Mrs. Miffling’s putterings 
over Miss Pascoe, who hadn’t fainted, but w T as only 
utterly limp, a sobbing sound coming from her twisted 
lips. He ignored Mrs. Miffling’s tirade about tenement- 
house conduct and ordering offenders out of the school; 
he could make nothing of the shrill comments of the 
littlest girl; but something in the look of Jo Ellen made 
him notice that Miss Baum was saying, “Miss Pascoe 
started it,” and led him to know that Miss Pascoe was 
the one w r ho was being lifted from the floor. 

Ah yes! The fat man’s face now relaxed into an ad¬ 
miring grin. The one on the floor started it, but the 
red-headed one finished it. And so neatly! 

Being assured that Miss Pascoe was not mortally 
hurt, and that the mess was not to be probed at a 
stroke, Mrs. Miffling came back to the fat man with the 
air of one who would hurry a parting, adroitly indicat¬ 
ing that the way out w r as through the second room 
beyond. 

“Girls will be girls!” said the fat man. *“Of course 
it’s just sex—a boy in it somewhere. ” 

“Sex!” sputtered Mrs. Miffling. “I’d say the heat 
and bad tempers. ” 


BREAKING AWAY 79 

“The heat, yes. Makes it worse. Just sex. We 
must take it for granted. ,, 

“Sex? It was a squabble about a typewriter.” 

“So.” The fat man did not press the point. “I 
like the looks of that red-headed girl. What’s her name? ” 

“She’s only had about five weeks here,” declared 
Mrs. Miffling. “Out of the question. She’s not ready. 
She couldn’t-” 

“Yes, but in another month—say early in October. 
That’s when my girl marries. I’d take the chance. Some¬ 
how she looks like the sort. Eh—what did you say her 
name was?” 

“I didn’t say. It’s Rewer—Ellen Rewer. But 
where do you think I would come in? This isn’t an 
employment agency. If I let girls go before they’re 
trained—right in the middle of a course-” 

“I get you. Naturally. Sure thing. Bad business 
for you . I get you. It would be up to me to square 
myself. I would. Just my way, you know, to pick 
’em out. I always do that. I sort of get an impression— 
you know how it is—an impression. ” 

“You can’t get dictation wdth an impression, believe 
me. 

“But I dictate very slowly. My girl says she could 
take me in longhand. Anyway, I’ll be in again. I 
live very near. M’wife says, ‘Don’t leave the thing to 
the last minute and then have a fit.’ I saw this ‘business 
school.’ ‘There you are,’ I says. ‘Get in and pick one 
off the bush.’” 

“All right,” said Mrs. Miffling in dismissal. The fat 
man found the stairs. 

IX 

Miss Baum had insisted that Jo Ellen go with her to 
the corner drug store, wearing her strip of fur to cover 
the only scratch that bled troublesomely. When they 
came back Miss Pascoe had gone home and Mrs. Mif¬ 
fling had the air of sitting amid wreckage. Fortunately 




80 


JO ELLEN 


for her feelings, the day brought three accessions to 
the school. Whatever may have been her later reactions, 
she said nothing whatever to Jo Ellen, who made a poor 
showing with her work during the remaining period 
and was quakingly glad when three o’clock came. 

The awkwardness of the situation for Jo Ellen was 
progressive. If it had been a twitchy matter at the 
school, it was worse to meet her mother; and worst to 
have Uncle Ben come home at six o’clock. . . . 

“A fight!” 

Uncle Ben walked up and down the living room, 
swinging his arms. 

He stopped in front of Jo Ellen to study the marks. 

“Business!” He laughed unpleasantly, clenching his 
fists, then took Jo Ellen very softly by the shoulders. 
“Say —you landed, didn’t you. You didn’t get it all?” 

“I’m hungry,” said Jo Ellen. 

“Yes—but, see here—how was it? You handed her 
a lollapaloosa? Just tell me that.” 

“She was crazy. I had to put her down.” 

“For the count. That’s it. Down and out for Miss 
Cat. That’s the stuff. And here’s you, hungry.” 

“Don’t make it a joke,” said Mrs. Rewer. 

“Joke nothing!” cried Bogert. “Jo Ellen scored. 
That’s the stuff. What’s a scratch? Suppose . . . ” 

Bogert went outdoors. He could be heard pacing 
the porch. He was still there when his mother came 
spryly up the steps, her keen eyes missing nothing. 

“What’s the matter?” she asked crisply. 

“Matter?” Bogert essayed a blank look. “Mother, 
you Sherlocks are always suspicious. Do I look as if 
anything was wrong? ” 

“You’re restless about something.” 

“Dinner,” he grunted, then decided to add, “and 
Jo Ellen’s had a fight. ” 

“Well, that’s interesting,” and Mrs. Bogert swung 
open the screen door. 


BREAKING AWAY 


81 


Jo Ellen was carrying dishes to the table. 

“Who with?” her grandmother asked at sight of her. 
“You mean ‘with whom,’ ” said Bogert, behind her. 
“I’ve had that pounded into me and I’m passing it along.” 

“I’m glad something’s been pounded into you,” 
returned his mother. “And who’s been pounding you?' 9 
she demanded of her granddaughter. 

“I’m sick of telling it,” complained Jo Ellen. 
Nevertheless it had to be told again, and comment ran 
the length of the meal. Billy said: “You ought to’ve 
tripped her.” Bogert said: “A plain biff in the jaw at the 
beginning would have been about right.” Mrs. Rewer said: 
“I think I would have done that. But I’m glad you did 
just as you did—that you didn’t mark her up—that you 
downed her and finished it in a clean sort of way. ” 

Mrs. Bogert summed up: “Every woman should have 
one fight. It gives her an understanding of some things. 
Mine was postponed for a long time. I had a run-in 
three years—no, it was four years ago. ” 

“Mother!” Bogert threw out his hands. “I’ll bet 

that was a humdinger? And you never-” 

“A young Swedish woman tried to put something 
over on me at a steamboat landing. There was a sick 
boy and I was watching out for him in a crowd. Well, 
the Swede undertook to shove me out of her way and 
I gave her—maybe it was something like yours, Jo 
Ellen. A quick one. It took all the push out of her, 
anyway. I’ll never forget the fishy look of her eyes as 
she sprawled there, blearing up at me. Of course, I 
was trembling a little for an hour afterward. ” 

“I’d have given fifty dollars to see that!” cried Bogert. 
“I sure would. And you never told us. There would 
have been something to put in a letter!” 

x 

Bogert’s levities never quite concealed the fact of 
a profound disturbance. The scarlet streak on Jo 



82 


JO ELLEN 


Ellen’s neck galled him for many days. Even when it 
had disappeared, there was an echo of the hurt in his 
way of watching her. The incident, though it might 
have happened in any dooryard (he had seen her more 
threateningly scathed in at least one game of ball), 
stood forth for him as representing the hazards of the 
outer world. The scuffle of life had put a mark upon 
her. 

The incident having occurred on a Friday, two inter¬ 
vening days assisted the processes of cooling and healing. 
On Monday the school agreed to ignore outward recog¬ 
nition of the calamity to personal relations. Miss 
Pascoe’s pale eyes found a way of avoiding all others. 
Her head bent a little lower than usual over her manual 
and ruled paper, and there was an access of stiffness 
before her typewriter. She had been an earnest student 
from her first day. Often she spent most of the lunch- 
hour recess in practice; at other times she gave this 
interval to a book. She always carried reading of some 
sort. Jo Ellen guessed that she was twenty, and hope¬ 
lessly disagreeable. 

One afternoon in September, when Jo Ellen had gone 
with Clara Dawes to a motion-picture theater, she saw 
Miss Pascoe walking with a middle-aged man on crutches. 
They moved slowly on a crowded sidewalk. It was 
evident that the man was very weak. Jo Ellen watched, 
for the permitted half minute, the slow pace of the pair. 
What an exasperating imprisonment to be shackled 
in such a w T ay beside an infirmity! She was sorry for 
the gray girl who worked so frantically and who went 
home to take up this burden. 

When she met Miss Pascoe face to face on the following 
day Jo Ellen said, ‘‘Good morning!” Miss Pascoe 
refused response. To Jo Ellen there was a peculiar 
sadness in her silence. 

The silence was startlingly broken a week later, 
when such a thing had begun to seem quite unthinkable. 


BREAKING AWAY 


83 


It chanced that the two were left alone at the close of 
school. Jo Ellen had set herself to finish, at all hazards, 
a piece of transcription, and it was as amazing as some 
violent shattering of the room to know that the figure 
of Miss Pascoe stood beside her desk, and to hear the 
colorless voice say, “I was a fool.” 

Jo Ellen looked up quickly, and saw the gray face set 
in what might have seemed under any other circum¬ 
stances to be a defiance. 

There was a strained interval in which Jo Ellen 
arose and waited. 

“Miss Baum told me the truth—several days ago— 
about your trying to fix the machine. I suppose you 
didn’t think it was worth while to mention a thing 
like that to anyone who could spill over as I did. But 
I don’t quite like ... I can’t let you go on thinking 
that I’m a beast. I’m not nice, but I’m not a beast. I’ve 
had a lot of trouble ...” 

“Let’s forget it,” said Jo Ellen. 

Miss Pascoe looked at Jo Ellen as if she were trying to 
fancy a matter like forgetting. There was a little 
tremor in her lips, then a hardening of their lines. She 
made a gesture that might have meant much if it could 
have been read. 

“I don’t think I could quite do that,” she said. “It 
isn’t true when we say that, is it? But I would like— 
you will stop thinking of me as a beast, won’t you?” 

“I didn’t mean it,” protested Jo Ellen. “And I 
don’t think it. I’ve only felt sorry. ” 

“Sorry for me?” Miss Pascoe became rigid again. 

“Sorry it happened,” said Jo Ellen. “Sorry I let 
myself ...” 

“I don’t blame you.” 

“You’ll let me be sorry you’ve had trouble.” 

Miss Pascoe turned away, then turned back. The 
tears gave an odd pathos to the grimness of her face. 

“I won’t begin yapping about my troubles,” she said. 



84 


JO ELLEN 


When the time came the troubles were told. They 
centered in the man on crutches. Her father was near 
the end of the savings that made it possible for them to 
piece out with the pension, or half pay, from the people 
he had worked for—for twenty years. It was incurable, 
the affair of the foot. And his general health was bad. 
As soon as she could equip herself she was going to work. 
That would save them from separation. It would be 
terrible if he had to go to some charitable place. There 
were things his daughter could do for him that no one 
else would understand. . . . 

Jo Ellen listened with a sympathy that Miss Pascoe 
accepted at last with a gratefulness of which she gave 
many strange signs. Jo Ellen found the gratefulness 
and the resulting friendship as peculiar as the rest of 
her. They had many talks. 

The great event in early October was the visit from 
the fat man. 

XI 

% 

The fat man came promptly to the point. 

“I never flourish around,” he said to Mrs. Miffiing. 
“Always get straight down to brass tacks. My name’s 
J. J. Trupp. You’ll remember I was in here before. 
Now I’m ready to talk business. With your permission 
and co-operation—which I shall compensate, if that is 
implied—you see, I’m perfectly frank with you—I 
would like to engage the services of a girl I saw here— 
assuming, of course, that she is still here. I never 
forget a name—Miss Ellen Rewer. Red hair.” 

“I really don’t understand you,” exclaimed Mrs. 
Miffling. “I really don’t.” 

The fat man paused in the midst of the process of 
mopping his neck, which seemed to be chronically damp. 

“Now, do you know,” he said, “I should have thought 
that I had been exceptionally explicit. Honest injun, 
do you mean to say I haven’t been as plain as daylight?” 

“I don’t understand,” Mrs. Miffling returned, with 


BREAKING AWAY 


85 


a quite sincere stare, “how you could choose a stenog¬ 
rapher in the manner-” 

“Ah! You think I’m eccentric—or maybe something 
worse. Well, maybe I am. But I’ll tell you something. 
I tried the efficiency method of scientific selection. 
Sounds good. I know a man who picks his people by 
the reports of a handwriting expert. Bright idea, for 
all I know. There are tests of the most profound char¬ 
acter. Anyway, you can read the diplomas, cross- 
examine the girl, drag in her parentage, ask her what 
dreams she has. I suppose you could send her to a 
phrenologist for a confidential report. When you are 
all through you can land the poorest imitation of an 
honest-to-God secretary outside of an asylum. I tell 
you, I’ve tried being scientific. I’ve tried letting my 
wife pick ’em, and I don’t mind remarking that my 
wife has an extraordinarily keen judgment of human 
beings. But the one she picked for me was the most 
perfect specimen of the female boob that ever used up 
carbon paper. No, sir. I got through with all that. 
I tried instinct , and found that it works. I get an 
impression—as I think I told you—an impression. I 
had an impression about the Jewish girl I have now. 
She’s the goods. My wife didn’t like her at first. Now 
she admits—anyway, she says she’s improved wonder¬ 
fully. I tell you when you get ’em right they do improve. 
And my impression’s what I go by. No questions, 
except, maybe, are they engaged to be married. I 
think this Jewish girl fooled me. She’s going to be 
married next week. Maybe the Jews have short engage¬ 
ments. I don’t know. Anyway, off she goes next 
Friday. Wants me to come to her wedding. My wife 
thinks that would be a little too so-so. Anyway, I 
want a new one. And I had the impression that the 

girl with the red hair-” 

“She isn’t through with her work,” declared Mrs. 
Miffiing. 




86 


JO ELLEN 


“My dear lady, anything she hasn’t learned in two 
months under your instruction-” 

“It can’t be done in two months. ” 

“I’ll take her up where you leave off. What does it 
is the influence of personality—personality. I round 
them out, develop them. Of course, they’ve got to 
know the chicken tracks and a little about the machine. 
Not too much. They get high flown with too much 
training. What they want is plain practice on the job. 
I guess you’d say I was an easy boss. But I’m a good 
trainer. ” 

“This girl’s only seventeen,” protested Mrs. Miffling. 

“My dear lady, age means nothing at all. The 
worst numskull I ever had was forty-two. A fact. 
Why that woman ” 

“You’d better speak to the girl herself. I suppose 
I can’t prevent you-” 

“Now you’re talking,” exclaimed Mr. Trupp. “Now 
we’re getting down to it.” 

“Her future is her affair. If she’s willing to cut off 
her own training-” 

“And begin a new training—going right on. She’s 
had great luck, beginning with you-” 

Mrs. Miffling went to call Jo Ellen. 

“Here’s a man wants to offer you a position. You’re 
not ready for any position. But he’s a freak and wants 
you anyway. You’ll have to decide for yourself. ” 

This was said just outside the classroom. It was 
accompanied by no account of the antecedent circum¬ 
stances. Mrs. Miffling’s annoyance had been softened 
but it survived. She evidently felt that precipitation 
would be as unfavorable as possible to Mr. Trupp, 
whose proportions had a first effect of appalling Jo Ellen 
when she saw them silhouetted against the rear window 
of the office as she came in. 

“Ah! Miss Rewer. Won’t you sit here a moment, 
please?” Mr. Trupp indicated an office chair. “This 







BREAKING AWAY 


87 


is business. I wish a new stenographer—though I’d 
say more a secretary than a stenographer in the ordinary 
sense. I don’t say it to flatter you—that would be 
unbusinesslike and dangerous—but you seem to me the 
sort of girl I would like to take the place of my present 
secretary, who is getting married. You’re not engaged to 
be married, are you?” 

“No,” returned Jo Ellen in a complete bewilderment. 

“That isn’t impertinence. Just caution. You see 
I’m both impulsive and cautious! I’m impulsive about 
deciding that I prefer you, and cautious about assuring 
myself that you’re not going to step off. Lord knows how 
soon. Anyway, I’d like to offer you a position beginning 
on Monday week. Say fifteen dollars to start with. 
My name is J. J. Trupp. Office in the Van Veeder 
Building, Sixty-fifth street.” 

It didn’t sound real to Jo Ellen. This was not the 
way she had expected her first job to happen. Mr. 
Trupp was so large, so full of words, and Mrs. Miffling 
had acted so queerly that she listened in stupefaction. 

“What would you say?” suggested Mr. Trupp. 

“I’d say it was sudden,” replied Jo Ellen. 

Mr. Trupp laughed voluminously and winked at Mrs. 
Miffling. 

“I knew it,” he said. “I knew it. She’s just as I 
expected. ” 

“What I don’t see,” ventured Jo Ellen, “is how you 
came to choose me. I haven’t-” 

“I’ve explained all that to the lady here,” and Mr. 
Trupp waved a fat hand toward Mrs. Miffling. “I’ve 
told her that this is my way. Call it impulsive, if you 
like. I had a glimpse of you and decided, first crack 
out of the box, that you were it. Why wouldn’t it be 
most sensible for you to call and see me at my office— 
any morning at ten—and we can talk it over. You 
can ask my present secretary—she gets married on 
Sunday week—what sort of a monster I am. If I haven’t 




88 


JO ELLEN 


prejudiced you too much at the beginning you might 
want to talk over with me the possible advantage of 
practice in an actual position. Of course, you could 
learn a lot more here. But you’ll learn a lot more with 
me, and be paid for it. What do you say?” 

“I’ll come and see you,” said Jo Ellen. 

Mr. J. J. Trupp was moistly radiant as he went away, 
after concisely repeating about the Van Veeder Building. 

When Mrs. Miffling had duly recalled the circumstances 
under which Mr. Trupp first received her “impression” 
Jo Ellen’s feelings underwent a sharp change. 

“The idea,” she cried. “Do you mean to say, Mrs. 
Miffling, that he saw us fighting?” 

“And pointed you out on the spot. ‘That’s the one,* 
he said. ” 

“Well, of all things!” 

“Just about insane, I’ll say. Of course, I didn’t take 
it seriously enough to tell you. ” 

“If this is his idea of being funny-” 

“You can see, my dear, that the man’s light-headed.” 

Nevertheless, Jo Ellen had said that she would see 
him. It was a matter for the family council in In wood; 
and the judgment here was, on the whole, rather cool 
toward Mr. Trupp. There was no definite challenge of 
Jo Ellen’s determination to rebuke Mr. Trupp in some 
conclusive manner. Beyond his first explosion of mer¬ 
riment, Uncle Ben had given no indication of his attitude. 
The explanation of his unusual reticence appeared on the 
following evening. 

“Well,” he said then, with his arm around Jo Ellen, 
“I’ve had a look at your friend Trupp.” 

Jo Ellen was ready to bridle. 

“ Hold on, now. Thought it would be a sensible thing 
to give the guy a once-over. And I’m saying he’s all 
right. A queer duck; but he’s honest Yes, I believe 
he’s straight as a string. Seemed to like my coming in. ” 

“Taffied you up,” suggested Mrs. Hewer. 



BREAKING AWAY 


89 


“Not at all,” protested Bogert. “He-” 

“But the way the whole thing started -” Jo Ellen 

complained with a fresh resentment. 

“What of it? That’s what got me —the way it started. 
I began to like him when you told us that. Exactly 
what I’d have done. One thing you’ve got to remember. 
He had a look at you. It wasn’t only what you did. 
Can’t you see that? The only thing I’ve got against 
him is that he was brought up on a farm. Damn it, 
all of them that get there in New York were brought 
up on a farm. It makes you sick. But he’s all right. 
I believe he’ll be good to you.” 

After much discussion it was agreed that Jo Ellen 
should be left to make her own decision at another 
meeting with Mr. Trupp. This meeting had a pre¬ 
liminary incident, for he was not in when Jo Ellen 
called, and the secretary, now nearing the brink of 
marriage, intervened. 

The secretary, who was reading a novel at the moment, 
surveyed Jo Ellen intently and made no concealment of 
her immediate surmise. 

“You’re from the business school, aren’t you?” 

“Yes.” 

“Mr. Trupp’ll be in any minute. Better sit down and 
wait. Any minute. He’s in and out a good deal. Listen, 
he’s a dear. You won’t have any trouble with him. 
Mrs. Trupp—well, you know how wives are. Or maybe 
you don’t. Of course, she ain’tjin much. Sometimes 
she sort of gets me. Listen, couldn’t you come on 
Thursday? I want to sneak a day sooner than I thought. 
I’m getting married, and you know how it is before a 
wedding. If you could make it Thursday-” 

“We haven’t agreed about it,” said Jo Ellen. 

“O you will. He’ll persuade you. He told me he 
wanted you. He said he saw you some time ago——” 

“How did he say he saw me?” 

This left the secretary no escape, and she blinked. 






90 


JO ELLEN 


“Let me see—there was some sort of a—row. He —■— ” 

“I think that’s horrid exclaimed Jo Ellen. 

“Dearie—excuse me—I didn’t-” 

“To think he’d go around telling-” 

“Listen, dearie, he wouldn’t go around telling. He 
tells me everything. He was very respectful about you. 
Honest, he was. It was just that he admired you. See? 
Admired you. I wouldn’t care. Onee I talked up to a 
man who came in here and he said afterward he admired 
me for it. ” 

“I don’t admire him , ” said Jo Ellen. 

“O but you will, dearie. Some day I’m going to drop 
in when I’m downtown—our flat’s in the Bronx—and 
you’ll say he’s-” 

The door clicked and J. J. Trupp began to fill the 
office. 

“Well, well! The conspirators! Talking me over! 
That settles me!’\ . . 

When Jo Ellen lay in bed that night tracing the images 
of the dark and listening to the reverberations of the 
things that had been said, she found only a confusion. 
She was going to work. But it was not as she had 
imagined it would be. 







PART THREE 
The High Place 

i 

T HE influence of Mr. Trupp’s secretary prevailed 
and Jo Ellen reported at the office on Thursday. 
Although Mrs. Miffling indicated her disapproval 
of the brigandage that was to rob her of a prompt¬ 
paying pupil, Jo Ellen (who had paid her October fees) 
returned to the business school for the intervening 
days. She made ardent use of every school hour, despite 
the indifference of Mrs. Miffling and Miss Crowe. It 
was all like the funeral of her foundation. 

; Miss Baum said, “ You’re lucky. ” The littlest girl 
said, “Gee, I wish I was going straight into a job.” 

Miss Pascoe found a private moment in which to 
take Jo Ellen's hand. Her own was cold and weak. 

“I’m sorry you’re going,” she said. “I hope I’ll 
see you again. ” 

“We must see each other,” returned Jo Ellen. The 
look of Miss Pascoe made her feel like crying . . . 

The bride-to-be had set the hour of nine-thirty, but 
Jo Ellen found Mr. Trupp’s door still locked when she 
arrived in scrupulous accord with the appointment. 
The office was near the elevator when you got off at the 
sixth floor. Gilt letters on the door announced, “J. J. 
Trupp. Real Estate and Insurance.” Below these 
lines were: “The Orin Parker Corporation. The Hinkler 
Heights Co. ” Jo Ellen had read these lines, and all the 
other door announcements of the sixth-floor landing 
before Trupp’s Miss Rosen appeared. 

“My! but you’re punctual!” exclaimed Miss Rosen. 

91 


92 


JO ELLEN 


“I always was when I came to a new job.” Finding 
the key in her handbag reminded her that she was to 
surrender it. “Here it goes right into your hand now, 
while I think of it. ” 

The squarish office had a partition inclosing Mr. 
Trupp’s desk. In the open room were the typewTiter 
desk, a pair of filing cabinets, and a heavy black 
walnut affair, like a wardrobe, that bulged with papers. 
On top of the filing cabinets, and filling the space between 
the wardrobe and the corner, were tied packages and a 
litter of circulars. 

“Yesterday,” said Miss Rosen, “he paid me for my 
full week and slipped me a ten spot for a present. Not 
so bad, eh? Told him he mightn’t see me this morning 
unless he got in early. I can soon show you where 
everything is. Do you know filing? It’s easy the way 
he has it. ” 

In half an hour Miss Rosen had ranged the topography 
of the office, pulled out all the drawers of Mr. Trupp’s 
desk, indicated the situation of bank books and such¬ 
like, and the whereabouts of various printed forms, as 
well as letter paper, carbon paper, pencils, and so on. 

“But he’ll tell you everything he wants,” said Miss 
Rosen, as if to suggest that Jo Ellen need not remain in 
any anxiety as to details. It appeared, too, that she 
was in some excitement as to getting away. “You 
know how it is about a wedding,” she repeated. “You 
keep thinking you’ll forget something. I’m not a bit 
nervous generally. But it comes to me every once in a 
while—Sunday night! ” 

“I suppose it would be exciting,” observed Jo Ellen. 

“Listen, dearie, it’s exciting all right. There’s so 
many things to get ready. I have a traveling dress 
that’s one dream. And it has to be altered yet. Then 
there’s the eats. Ninety people. M’ father’s a great 
fellow for Rhine wine. You’d think that was all there 
was to the wedding. Of course, my mother cries most of 


THE HIGH PLACE 


93 


the time. You have to expect that. Well, dearie, 
good-by. I’m going to come in some day. Soon as we 
get back. To see how the old place is going. Have you 
got a novel? You’ve got to have a book. I’ll leave you 
Gilded Passion . It’s awfully good. By-by. Tell Mr. 
Trupp the bride sends him her best! ” 

That first moment of being alone in the place was 
appalling to Jo Ellen. She had imagined it as a thrilling 
plunge. In fact it was as if a lid had been closed over 
her. The window of Mr. Trupp’s room looked into the 
street. The other window beside the typewriter desk 
revealed a cleft between the buildings through which she 
could trace the yellow margin of an apartment house. 
The rumble of the street accentuated the aloofness of 
the office and the foolish suspense of waiting. 

It was eleven when the door clicked. 

“Now, wasn’t that a funny thing!” exclaimed Mr. 
Trupp as Jo Ellen put aside Gilded Passion , “here in 
this building—right on my own elevator—I meet 
Lindley Case, a chap I used to know when I was a kid 
in Chillicothe! Bump right into him! And he tells me 
he’s been on Fifty-third Street for four years. In the 
steel business. Hadn’t seen him since—well, I guess 
it was nineteen-three anyway. ‘Lindley,’ I says, ‘you’re 
getting old.’ And he is. Funny how some men age. 
Too feverish. You ought to hear him! ‘You’ll be quite 
a sizable boy yourself when you grow up,’ he says. His 
father had a farm next to ours out on the state road. 
Looks the spit of his father. The old man wasn’t much 
of a farmer. Full of crazy experiments. Terrible temper. 
They had him up once for punching a fertilizer salesman. 
And now Lindley and I bump into each other. Isn’t 
that like New York?” 

Mr. Trupp moved into his room and Jo Ellen used 
the pause to remark that Miss Rosen had been compelled 
to leave, but had been very kind about showing her the 
way around. 



94 


JO ELLEN 


“Good work! Nothing intricate about things here. 
You’ll find it plain enough. Some people are fearfully 
fussy. The Trupp way isn’t that way at all. What 
is business? Nothing but common sense. Just being 
ready for Opportunity. You can’t grab it by the collar. 
You can look sharp for it. You can be hospitable. But 
you can’t be rough with it. No use getting hysterical. ” 

There was a sound at the door. Jo Ellen had a feeling 
as of Opportunity faintly knocking. 

A queer, shabby man, with a slanting mouth and eyes 
that did not seem to lift their glance above the floor, 
came in like a diffident shadow. 

“Morning, Wilton!” tossed out Mr. Trupp. 

As the man (who made no answering sound) turned 
mechanically to the chair in the corner, Mr. Trupp 
signaled to Jo Ellen to step close, then muttered, “A 
cousin of mine. Perfectly harmless. Don’t mind him. ” 

Mr. Trupp surveyed his desk. “No mail, eh? Well, 
Miss Rewer, I’ll be back after lunch. Something I’ve 
got to tend to. Make yourself comfortable. W 7 e’ll 
get along fine. ” 

Wilton remained, seated without movement in the 
corner chair. Jo Ellen now observed that near the chair 
there was a cuspidor into which W T ilton spat at regular 
intervals. There was a stain of tobacco on his lips. 

Jo Ellen wondered whether she ought to speak to 
him. When Mr. Trupp said, “Don’t mind him,” he 
probably implied a silent acceptance of Wilton. As 
for Wilton, he evidently did not expect to be spoken 
to. He sometimes gave a shrug and changed his position, 
with his eyes still set at that "vacant downward angle. 
He spat noiselessly, but Jo Ellen winced at the sound in 
the receptacle. Perhaps he was something like an idiot. 
She didn’t remember ever to have seen an idiot. 

Miss Rosen had said nothing about Wilton, but Miss 
Rosen was in such a hurry that it was possible she had 
omitted a great many items of suggestive information 


THE HIGH PLACE 95 

that one might otherwise have felt it advisable or at 
least interesting to communicate. 

Once while Jo Ellen was going on desperately with 
Gilded Passion she heard Wilton sigh. She did not 
turn her head. 

Just before twelve o’clock Wilton arose quietly and 
went out, closing the door stealthily, as if he were 
safeguarding a secret. 

Mrs. Bogert had strongly seconded the injunction 
of Jo Ellen’s mother that she shouldn’t try to get along 
with one of these cream puff lunches. It was a diversion 
to begin the experiment in lunch places, of which Jo 
Ellen found many within a short radius. The first 
day’s choice fell to a blue and white “tea room. ” She felt 
constrained to hurry back to the office, in view of the uncer¬ 
tainty as to what Mr. Trupp meant by “after lunch.” 

It was half past two when he came in and he dictated 
two short letters very deliberately. Before Jo Ellen 
could transcribe them he told her a long story about a 
hotel experience he once had in Dayton; and when she 
reached the typewriter at last, palpitating with eagerness 
to test her notes, he came out from his room to say, 
“You know, it’s that way about hotel clerks. You 
take one that’s been brought up in the country and he’s 
different. Something human about him. Understands 
men, and keeps his head. When he puts his hand out— 
well, you know he has a background. These fellows 
born on a fire escape show it every time. Good men, too, 
some of them, lots of polish and all that. I know one 
used to be a minister. There’s a fellow down here in 
the—yes, in the Knickerbocker—was a college professor. 
Four or five languages. What of that? I don’t care 
if a dook came in, your farm man has a way. He has a 
way. Puts it over. Say, that uncle of yours—there’s 
a man I like!—says what he means—we got on fine 
together—wasn’t exactly farm, but he had the country 



96 


JO ELLEN 


town bringing up and you can tell it. Says yov were 
born up there where it’s almost country—and New 
York, too—that’s the joke!—and we can see what it 
did for you. Well, here’s business beckoning us onward! ” 

Jo Ellen heeded the beckoning of her typewriter and 
a great weight seemed to slide off when the two letters 
were signed. She took them out and dropped them in 
the mail chute. Perhaps Miss Crowe would have found 
fault with the typing but Mr. Trapp had no criticism. 
He appeared, in fact, to affix his swinging signature 
without reading them. Yet it was possible that his 
trained eye had accomplished a quick scrutiny. 

In what remained of the afternoon after Mr. Trapp’s 
departure Jo Ellen was incited to practice, which kept 
her from thinking about the dreadful silence. There 
was an exhilaration about going home. The clatter of 
the train gave a crescendo to the day. And there was 
a novelty about entering the house as a returned w r orker. 
She had so little to tell that her mother seemed to suspect 
her of concealments. It is true that she hid the degree 
of creepy annoyance she felt as to Wilton. She tried to 
make a joke of him; and she didn’t dw r ell on the hollow 
times when she w T as alone. It might not be playing the 
game to say too much about that, though it w r as the 
feeling closest to her. . . . 

The next morning was rather busy, since Mr. Trapp 
came early and there were not only four or five letters 
but a number of insurance blanks to be filled in, and 
these last were exacting, especially as they were wider 
than letter sheets and the carbon paper was hard to 
manage. Mr. Trapp told her to take her time, and in 
the afternoon found only one thing that should be 
done differently. Saturday morning had nothing more 
of action than the receiving of three days’ pay; and 
Monday was devoted chiefly to practice and the finishing 
of Gilded Passion. 

It was on Tuesday that she confessed to herself that 


THE HIGH PLACE 


97 


she was not happy. Mr. Trupp had been in for an hour, 
most of which had been consumed by a prolonged 
account of a fishing trip he once made with a man who 
was now mixed up with some tremendously important 
thing about the war. 

She had forgotten to bring a book. For a time she 
watched the street from Mr. Trupp’s window. There 
was a dental office directly across the way and she could 
see plainly the feet of the people in the dentist's chair 
and the white jacket of the dentist. She practiced for 
a while, then sat there at her own desk counting the 
windows of the apartment house visible through the 
vertical slit. When she saw an occasional head it looked 
imprisoned. Everybody seemed to be living in a cage. 
She was living in a cage. She was not locked in; she 
might run away for an hour or two and no one would 
know. Probably Mr. Trupp wouldn't care. There had 
been but two telephone calls since she came. She was 
held simply by a bargain, the bargain to stay there 
doing nothing most of the time, for fifteen dollars a 
week. - Probably in a certain length of days she would get 
more dollars a week for doing nothing most of the time. 

No, this was not the business of her dream. Mr. 
Trupp himself did not fill the dream lines. She had 
fancied meeting a lean, taciturn, live-wire sort of a 
man who had the manner of looking through her, who 
would ask her three or four jerky questions, and tell 
her at last that he would give her a trial. Then here 
was Mr. Trupp, asking nothing at all, interrupting the 
little he gave her to do with stupid stories of his stupid 
life, and telling her to be comfortable. . . . 

For a moment she thought Mr. Trupp had come back. 
But it was Wilton, who after softly closing the door, sat 
down in the corner chair. 

Jo Ellen said, not quite in her natural voice, “Good 
morning. ” 

Wilton made no response. He gave a furtive look 


98 


JO ELLEN 


in which there was an effect of fright or puzzlement, 
and leaned sideways to spit. Occasionally he glanced 
toward Mr. Trupp’s empty room, and for a time he went 
in and sat in his cousin’s chair. When he returned to 
the chair in the corner, Jo Ellen, her face over the short¬ 
hand book, heard again the revolting liquid sound. 

It was possible that she could endure the shut-in dullness 
of the office, that she might in time come to find compen¬ 
sations in the infrequency of Mr. Trupp, and learn to 
make the best of his casual garrulity. But she was sure she 
would never get used to Wilton. He was silent. He repre¬ 
sented no actual threat. But there was a horror in the sil¬ 
houette of him hovering there in the corner of her eye. She 
tried to pity him, but her pity was stifled by a nausea. 

Wilton seemed to know when it was twelve o’clock, 
perhaps by some bell or whistle, and when he had gone, 
Jo Ellen was seized with a desire to get far from the place. 
She went to a more distant restaurant for lunch, and 
afterward walked briskly over to Central Park. There 
was a mellow color in the old trees and an autumn tang 
in the air. People came out of their cages to be here 
in the sunlight. Shiny black shuttles that were motor 
cars raced through the mesh of green and amber. 

On the way back from an exultant jaunt that took 
her as far as the reservoir, Jo Ellen saw, near the gate, 
Wilton huddled on a bench. She hurried, but not quickly 
enough to avoid seeing him spit into the grass. 

hi 

Nevertheless, the midday walk began an effort to 
throw off the thrall. Her own zest was met by various 
contributory helps. Even the confidential remark 
by the young man who ran the Number One elevator 
and who now assumed the privileges of an established 
acquaintance, "was an alleviation. Mr. Trupp acquired 
a sensational variation by almost dashing into the office 
with a document that was to be copied in a hurry. And 


THE HIGH PLACE 


99 


late in the afternoon, when quiet had returned, came 
Marty Simms’s voice over the ’phone. 

Marty was greatly entertained by Jo Ellen’s effort to 
guess how he knew where she was. She noticed a height¬ 
ened animation in his manner, and took the liberty of sus¬ 
pecting that a changed situation had invested her with a 
new interest. She asked him whether he was talking from 
his office, which might mean that he was subject to the 
attention of the girl with the suspicious ring, for example. 

“Yes,” he said, “but I’m in a booth. We have a 
booth for long distance—or for any nice little private 
talk like this.” ~ ' - 

“Then nobody knows how you’re wasting your time.” 

“O they all know I never call up anybody but very 
particular friends. ” 

“But suppose one of these friends happened to have 
work to do?” 

“Say—are they driving you?” 

“Terribly!” 

“Somebody’ll have to rescue you. I know a nice 
soft job. ” 

“I don’t want a soft job. A soft job is what’s the 
matter with me. ” 

“Quit joshing, Jo Ellen. What do you mean?” 

“My man doesn’t give me enough to do. I’m bored 
to death. ” 

“Then you’re alone in the office—talking that way.” 

“ He lets me say anything I like. ” 

“Honest—what sort of a fellow is he?” 

“A fat man.” 

“Then he isn't there. Listen, Jo Ellen, I have to go 
up to Seventieth Street-” 

“ You can’t come in. I’m going to be strict about that.” 

“I thought you might let me steer you home in the 
crush. ” 

“I don’t need to be steered, thank you. ” 

“You see, after I get through at Seventieth Street I’m 



> ) i 



100 JO ELLEN 

going up to the Hill anyway—have an invitation to 
dinner up there. ” 

“How nice.” 

“ It certainly is. I’m quite fussed about it. Wonderful 
place to go to. People you’d like. ” 

“You don’t need to be escorted.” 

“That’s just it—I do, to the place I’m going. I think 
they’ll expect it. In fact, I know they will. It’s all 
made up for that. ” 

“Well, of all things!” 

“Yes. Your mother said, why not come to dinner? 
Wasn’t that luck? I was only going to ask whether 
you’d be in to-night. Of course, you can say, no. 
Your mother didn’t think you had anything doing.” 

“I’ll meet you at the corner of Broadway,” said Jo Ellen. 

“I’m so glad you’re delighted.” 

“At a quarter past five,” Jo Ellen added. 

Standing in the swaying crowd on the subway train, 
Marty unfolded the news that he was planning to go 
to Plattsburg. His father thought if there was to be 
war for the United States it would be worth while to get 
some training. A better chance for a commission and 
all that. And he agreed with his father. His mother 
was against it, and he hated to stir her up, but it looked 
as if he would be going to the training camp. 

“I w T anted to find out what you thought,” he said. 

“I can see you’re going,” returned Jo Ellen evasively. 

She had thought about soldiers a good deal. Every¬ 
body had. But she had never thought definitely about 
Marty in that way. She tried to fancy, facing him there 
in the crowd, how he might look \ . . how he might be, 
as a fighter. There was nothing about him to suggest 
anything soldierisli—nothing about his ways. He was 
strong enough, and maybe of a soldier size. But the 
sentimental streak, or whatever it was that seemed to 
separate him from anything rough, somehow made 
it hard to imagine him in a fearful game like the war. 


THE HIGH PLACE 


101 


Evidently he was full of this new notion. She could 
understand now a certain look he had when he met her 
at the corner, as of being at the door of an adventure, 
one that took you tremendously out. A training camp 
would not be at all like an office. There would be big 
movement in it, a slashing kind of action with a huge 
group of others. If it led into the great adventure . . . 
well, evidently, that could be frightful, even if you didn’t 
die. But you were kept going . . . enormously . . . 

The talk at dinner was about war. Mrs. Rewer liked 
Marty, and she grudged the sacrifice of him. She had 
a fighting indignation about enemies, but a flaming 
resentment against the ghastly processes of punishment. 
Grandmother Bogert had a more dogged attitude 
toward any nasty thing that had to be done. Her theory 
was that sniveling didn’t get you anywhere. 

“You would talk different if you had a young son,” 
declared Mrs. Rewer. 

“Young son?” growled Uncle Ben. “I guess I’m 
young enough to be in this when the time comes. ” 

His mother sent him a subduing glance. 

“You have your obligations here,” she said. . . . 

There were other evenings when Marty reverted to 
the training camp. On this subject Uncle Ben was 
usually inarticulate. He had furtive habits as to Marty, 
as though he envied or doubted him. He studied Jo 
Ellen’s face when Marty was near her, and was inclined 
to commit jostling remarks. When he spoke directly 
to Marty he was always gentle enough. He thought 
he was a nice clean boy. In a general way Marty meas¬ 
ured up, but there was a sort of presumption in his 
enthusiasms; perhaps a little of his taking Jo Ellen’s 
interest for granted. Something like that. 

IV 

The autumn seemed to rush by very quickly; which 
was odd in view of the slowness of effect in Mr. Trapp’s 


102 


JO ELLEN 


office. There might be great excitement in print; there 
might be submarine sensations and all sorts of emotional 
upheavals, with Prophecy gesticulating at the brink; 
but Mr. Trupp could tell stories while Rome burned. 

In the moments when he permitted himself to comment 
on the war, he indicated an assurance as to the LTnited 
States which had the established flavor of a religion. 
It was simply a question as to whether the United States 
should take the time to go over and stop the thing. 

Jo Ellen learned to suspect that, despite its casualness 
as she saw it, Mr. Trupp had a comfortable business. 
Evidently most of it happened where it was invisible 
to her. She would like to have gone out with him and 
watch it happen. Since this was impossible she settled 
into a toleration of conditions as they were, carried her 
book and newspaper, found ways to endure blank 
spaces, and even to endure Wilton when that apparition 
appeared. 

A man at the other end of the sixth floor asked her, 
one morning when he met her at the mail chute, whether 
she knew a stenographer who could be had. Miss Pascoe 
came into her mind and she sent her a letter, with the 
result that Miss Pascoe took her first place as a neighbor 
worker. The man at the other end of the floor was not 
at all like Mr. Trupp, and had a business that was quite 
as different as the man. Miss Pascoe worked very 
hard. Her boss had a way of dictating long letters at 
the end of the day to be typed and signed “per M. P.” 
after he had gone, so that she often was in the office until 
six o’clock. It was all wrong, Jo Ellen thought. Miss 
Pascoe should have had Mr. Trupp. Jo Ellen would 
have known what to do with the man who left legacy 
letters. 

Miss Pascoe, although she had had longer study and 
practice than Jo Ellen, was nervous for weeks. She was, 
indeed, too nervous ever to be really well. She lacked the 
confidence to make definite work plans, and Jo Ellen’s 


THE HIGH PLACE 


103 


call that took her out of the school was the occasion for 
a fervent gratefulness. The words were few but the 
gratefulness was made plain. The two formed the habit 
of going out to lunch together. 

One noon time when they were leaving the building 
a young man standing within the doorway took a step 
forward, halted at seeing that Jo Ellen was not alone, 
then decided to ask, 

“Miss Rewer?” 

“Yes,” answered Jo Ellen blankly. 

“This is for you,” said the stranger, holding out an 
envelope. As Jo Ellen took the envelope and read her 
name, the young man vanished. 

“What do you suppose . . . ?” Jo Ellen opened the 
envelope as they walked, and turned to the signature. 
The name of Stan Lamar leapt from the sheet. 

Miss Pascoe looked straight ahead while Jo Ellen put 
the letter in her handbag. 

“Some people have funny ways,” remarked Jo Ellen. 
There was no occasion to go further in comment, par¬ 
ticularly as Miss Pascoe did not intrude. The letter 
seemed to be muttering in the handbag while Jo Ellen 
ate her lunch and while the two strolled thereafter. 
There was a kind of defiance in prolonging the walk. 
The letter must be taught to wait its time. 

When the office was reached Mr. Trupp was there. 
Something, perhaps the elevator, made him think of the 
famous incident of that tumble in the barn and how 
hard it is to get a doctor quick, so that your head can 
pretty nearly bleed itself empty before the right way is 
found to stop it. Then there was a very long letter 
about a contract, with passages to be quoted from docu¬ 
ments on file. Jo Ellen began to regret that she hadn’t 
read the letter from Stan Lamar to be rid of it. Its 
whisper in the handbag became intolerable. It was 
responsible for several errors in her typing, by which it 
became necessary to do whole sheets a second time. 


104 


JO ELLEN 


When at last the work was finished and Mr. Trupp, 
after narrating the incident of an insurance man in 
Altoona who backed his car into an Elks’ parade, left the 
office for the day, her impatience had been dulled to the 
dimensions of a grudge. 

As she settled to the reading of the letter, Wilton 
came in. He seldom came in the afternoon; but there 
he was. She felt as if he were listening to what she read. 
Anyhow, his silence seemed to become noisy and his 
shadowy figure to crowd the place. 

It was a simple letter. ' 

‘‘You may not like this,” (Lamar wrote) “because 
you have an idea about me that’s all wrong. In that 
house—it was the wrong way to meet, I suppose. I 
was feeling rotten—you know how hot it was there—and 
my tongue hanging out—and you getting me as a burglar 
or something like that. Then it looked as if I never 
could dig that out of your head. When I saw you after¬ 
ward I was telling you the truth and I didn’t make any 
hit with myself the way I acted when you wanted to 
run away. I thought you were throwing me before I 
had a fair chance. I can see how you felt. It would 
have been different if we had met some other way and if 
a nice friendly family hadn’t given me a reputation. 
I’m not saying anything against the family but I wish 
I could put up my own case to you. I can’t do that now. 
I’m away off here in Arizona about horses. Horses have 
made trouble for me before this. But what I know about 
them is worth something now. It’s for the war. Some 
day I’ll be back in New York and then I’ll try to square 
myself with you. I’m not asking you to write. I’m 
not giving you any address. I know you wouldn’t write. 
The way this goes to you is the only way I could think 
out. The friend that gets it through is all right. If 
he does what I tell him, it won’t mean anything more I 
have to square myself for. Perhaps I can start even . 
I’m asking you to forget some tilings and let me do 



THE HIGH PLACE 


105 


that—start without too much of a handicap, anyway. 
There’s no your friend at the end of this because I 
haven’t the right yet. But I’ll fight for it. Always 
yours, Stan Lamar.” 

Wilton decided to go away and Jo Ellen reread the 
letter when quite alone. There was a tingle in it. It 
had much that wasn’t said. Very likely Mr. Stan Lamar 
thought he was being very shrewd. It was to sound 
sincere. Maybe it was sincere. But the cautions only 
looked crafty. No, she liked him best when he wasn’t 
being careful. And his carefulest trick was not so clever 
as he thought—sending a friend with the letter. Im¬ 
plying a secret. There was a flattery to himself on the 
whole theory of secrecy, as if he stood apart and could 
continue to be considered on such terms. The letter 
was an accusation of the secret. There shouldn’t have 
been any secret—not if it was to mean anything. It had 
been exciting when it didn’t seem that it had to mean 
anything. She had a right to a secret. But it was fright¬ 
fully awkward to have it grow. Going back over the 
whole thing to explain—that could look silly. He was 
making a little affair that didn’t matter look like a big one 
that nobody would be able to understand, and that couldn’t 
be told without . . . To explain you would be showing the 
letter. Tearing it up would even look suspicious. 

Yet she was glad he hadn’t sent the letter to the house. 
It would have been humiliating to have been forced, 
perhaps with no choice, to reveal, like a naughty child, 
the foolish story that had managed not to be told. 

She put the letter back into her handbag. At five 
o’clock she took it out, read the last lines again, and 
watched the pieces drop into her paper basket. Stan 
Lamar became annoyingly vivid when the letter had gone. 

v 

In snow time she caught herself wondering whether 
there was snow where Stan was and what gathering 


106 


JO ELLEN 


horses for a war might mean as an occupation. Also, what 
trouble horses might have made for him. Very likely the 
trouble had been mixed up with racing or something of 
that sort. . . . Perhaps something crooked. Presumably 
gathering horses for a w’ar was entirely straight. 

Then suddenly it was April and the United States was 
in the war, and everybody stared and talked, and Marty 
had enlisted. His father knew a colonel and he was to 
join a National Guard regiment then in the South. 
Suddenly it was a Saturday, and Marty, after all the 
talk, was really going away. They were having lunch 
together where there was music, and Marty was persuad¬ 
ing her to dance. His fingers against her back had an 
excited way of fidgeting. Because it was Saturday and 
her afternoon was free they went up to Inwood together 
and swished through the foam of left-over leaves, 
talking about camps, submarines, fox trots, birthdays, 
and Mr. Trupp. 

Marty saw to it that they came at last to the high 
place. Here he talked about letters. Would Jo Ellen 
pay attention to them if they came once in a while? 
Her promise had not the heartiness he seemed to be 
wishing for. Yet he knew that she had never been stirred 
much by letters. Once he had copied a poem into a letter 
and she never mentioned it, although there was a special 
meaning in the lines. 

Jo Ellen did find a special meaning in his way of taking 
her hand, or at least a stronger touch, as if what he was 
thinking was nearer to the hand—not so much as if he 
were dreaming and reaching out under some vague need 
for an accompaniment. He wasn't actually going over 
to the war just now, and his feeling about the mighty 
momentousness of the departure seemed exaggerated. 
He always wanted her to see more meaning in things 
than she really could see; or perhaps it was that he 
wanted her to say what she saw and felt, when feelings 
were a busy enough matter in themselves. 


THE HIGH PLACE 107 

“I’ll be telling you about the camp,” he said, “and 
how everything goes. ” 

“It’ll be rough work,” said Jo Ellen. 

“Yes. And you’ll tell me about Mr. Trupp and ——” 

“Not a word,” Jo Ellen insisted. “It would take 
too long. ” 

“ Anyway-” 

“Something that really happens , if there is anything.” 

“And you’ll know all the time that I’m thinking a lot 
about—about everything that happens to you.” 

“I’m sure nothing ever will happen to me—not 
really. ” 

“You always talk,’’said Marty, “as if—well, I think you’d 
like something doing —fearfully—like a play, maybe-” 

“If it was real.” 

“Or like the war.” 

“I think the w'ar’s beastly—making believe to hate 
one another. ” 

“They do hate one another. That’s what it’s about.” 

“ You don’t hate anybody, and you’re going to 
train- 

“Hate—no, I suppose I don’t. Except-” This 

seemed to give Marty an idea. He interrupted himself 
to seize it, tightening the hold on Jo Ellen’s hand. 
“I’d rather love somebody,” he added solemnly. 

Jo Ellen decided that this was because he was going 
away and felt romantic. She knew, while she noted the 
bare trees in the little gulf below, and the old smell 
that came up from all the matted leaves, that he was 
tense and intent. Of course, it was romantic. Wasn’t 
there something uncomfortable about romantic things 
when they tried to gather you in, and you had to decide 
or say or stop letting yourself go some simple way of 
your own? In a few hours he would be a soldier. This 
was what it meant. And there w r ere things you con¬ 
sidered about soldiers. You had to begin considering 
these things when anyone was only going to be a soldier. 







108 


JO ELLEN 


This was one of the ways in which circumstances came 
and took hold of you. 

“You’ll have your job,” she answered him finally. 

“Yes,” he said. “I’m going to tackle it hard. I’m 
going to make good. And you’re going to be with me 
on it—I want to be thinking that. You are going to be 
with me, aren’t you?” 

“Of course,” said Jo Ellen. “All your friends-” 

“More than that!” exclaimed Marty. Suddenly he 
drew closer, caught her tightly, and kissed her cheek. 
“Jo Ellen ... !” 

“Now you’re acting foolish.” She pushed him off. 
“Just because you’re going away.” 

“To be a soldier.” 

Jo Ellen laughed. “A soldier and a gentleman!” 

“When I get back,” he said, “with my tunic on— 
we’re going to be near New York before going over— 
I am going to forget the gentleman part of it. ” 

“Threats.” 

“Promises.” 

“I don’t ask any promises.” 

“No. You won’t ask anything. Thatfs true. . . . 
Well, I’m the one that won’t wait to be asked. I’ll 
always—we don’t have friends by ashing , do we? . . . 
It’s wonderful how you get to know who the best friend 
is, how you get to know the one you’ve got to have— 
the one that makes the difference—when something 
big comes out in front of you—when you have to decide 
about your life -” 

“Yes,” said Jo Ellen, “there’s a whole life coming.” 

“But it doesn’t come for us alone.” 

When he looked at her it was as if she were arrogantly 
alone, and a revolving universe, with himself in the 
front of the swinging clutter, left her unimpressed, 
inaccessible. No use reaching in and trying to get any 
real hold on her. You sort of swung loose again. 

She detected a downcast look. It was a pity he had 





THE HIGH PLACE 


109 


to be sentimental. It was all pleasant enough when 
he wasn’t that way. But he was to be a soldier. 

She put a hand over one of his. 

“We’ve got lots of work ahead of us. I’ve got to be 
in this.” 

Even to herself this had a very old sound—something 
almost funny, once it had come out. Perhaps a girl 
had to seem old to manage things. Yet she wasn’t 
feeling solemn. You couldn’t feel solemn at the beginning 
of everything. She felt more like challenging him to a 
run down to the green gate. 

vi 

Marty’s first letter from the camp was a practical 
affair, stressing the information that would have a 
military sound. Evidently he was elated extraordinarily. 
Jo Ellen could imagine his chest sticking out. With all 
this setting up and work outdoors he would look different 
when she saw him again, and perhaps be a bit struttish, 
which would make her laugh. In later letters he offered 
guarded allusion to the time when he should come to 
the Hill, before going across. Everything depended upon 
what should happen in the matter of the war. He 
began, in fact, to have that air of being subject to vast 
circumstances and particularly to the immediate pressure 
of authority. Jo Ellen concluded that she would not 
like to be in the grip of something that ordered you 
this way and that, and told you just when and how you 
were permitted to breathe. Of course, it was lucky that 
Marty, if he had to be gripped, could be so proudly 
submissive, could get so much satisfaction out of that 
“we” way of thinking. 

Jo Ellen’s attitude toward the “we” of things was to 
have discomforts. Mrs. Trupp, for instance, had an 
eagerness to wear something. 

Mrs. Trupp was not so fat as Mr. Trupp, but her 
amplitude expressed a harmony with his; which Jo Ellen 


110 


JO ELLEN 


thought could not be quite traditional. She fancied that 
fat men always had thin wives. The second time Mrs. 
Trupp came in—the first visit was brief and obviously 
for the purpose of objectifying Mr. Trupp’s selection— 
she had begun telling Jo Ellen about Mr. Trupp. He 
w'as, it appeared, rather a trying man. People might not 
think so. He was so agreeable to everybody. But he 
was trying. For one thing, he was careless about his 
eating. When she could feed him he was all right. But 
he lunched with people and had no sense at such times. 
The results were fearful for his insides. She described 
these results minutely. And then about his clothes. He 
had no inkling of order; none at all. Never knew where 
anything was. Probably it was the same at the office. 
Anyway, he had a distressing habit of shedding things 
at home—dropping them as if nothing had a place. 
Picking up after him kept a person busy. If she ever 
was away for a week or so, as when she went to visit 
her sister in Malden, the place became a sight. W r hen 
he tried to be orderly he was worse. It was inconceivable 
that a man could have so little judgment, for example, 
about putting pants away. She sometimes told him he 
had better leave them out. He w^as exasperating, too, 
about money; good, you might say, at making it, but no 
sense about spending it. People cheated him a good deal. 
His relatives were simply extraordinary. Wilton was 
bad enough, but there were rascals in the lot, and some 
female hangers-on that—well, it was a puzzle why the 
Lord made such tiresome people. They gave you a split¬ 
ting headache. Yet James not only tolerated them, but 
was ready to make a fool of himself for them any time. 

“Then there’s his clubs,” said Mrs. Trupp. “WTiat 
does he get out of them? Not a thing. Just places to 
gab in. And me sitting alone, and tired of the magazines. 
Thinks clubs are good for business; that an insurance 
man has to mix, and all that rot. I tell you, my dear, 
being a wife to a man’s exhausting. ” 


THE HIGH PLACE 


111 


It often occurred to Jo Ellen that she might have had 
an inadequate idea of Mr. Trupp without the help of 
his wife. Yet, evidently, two views might not always 
make a total. When you worked for a man you felt 
about him as Jo Ellen did. When you were married to 
him you felt as Mrs. Trupp did. Perhaps you couldn’t 
really add the two views together and find Mr. Trupp. 
Sometimes it seemed that one view might have to be 
subtracted from the other, and this was confusing. 

During the inclement periods Mrs. Trupp seldom 
dropped in. She came more frequently in the spring. In 
the summer she sat in range of the electric fan and 
talked about war work. She decided to put in some 
hours every other day helping with bandages. There 
was a thing you could wear with a red cross on it that 
appealed to her. She never could knit, but once in a 
while she tried it again. She understood the Government 
had forgotten all about socks. Imagine those poor 
boys in winter . . . ! 

Something Jo Ellen said about the slaughter in Europe 
brought a gasp from Mrs. Trupp. 

“My dear! You’re not a pacifist , are you?” 

Jo Ellen wasn’t sure she knew what a pacifist was. 
Eventually Mrs.Trupp seemed to be faintly reassured. She 
indicated that Mr. Trupp’s attitude was satisfactory. In¬ 
cidentally, she hoped the war wouldn’t hurt his business. 

The debates at home were frequently complicated 
for Jo Ellen. Her mother and Uncle Ben had more 
than one open quarrel, in which Uncle Ben had used 
that word pacifist with an ugly emphasis. Mrs. Hewer 
was incorrigible. She could understand a prize fight. 
There was a man-to-man decency about that. The best 
man won. But this dirty war thing . . . 

“But the dirtier it is,” cried Uncle Ben, “the more 
reason to go and stop it! ” 

“That’s the way they start it!” retorted Mrs. Rewer. 
“In any fight you hit first to stop it. Then you’re off.” 


112 


JO ELLEN 


Grandmother Bogert rebuked all argument. She 
saw the war as a job, one of those things that keep coming 
along and that you have to attend to. 

Jo Ellen wasn’t sure that she wholly sided with her 
mother, but from the way Uncle Ben looked at her, 
sometimes over his shoulder when he walked up and 
down the room, swinging his arms, she knew that she 
was disappointing. 

No other comment could match the bitterness of 
Mona Pascoe. Miss Pascoe’s face contorted when her 
hot sarcasms were flung at the patriots, who pounced 
upon objectors. It was pathetic and startling to hear 
her voice soften in the cry, “It’s all so damned 
cruel! ” 

The conflict in Jo Ellen herself often made her miser¬ 
able. There were times, then and later, when the need 
to get her hands into the mess, to push in some direction, 
appeared to have a hot imperativeness. Sitting in the 
office and looking at the apartment-house windows 
made her feel like Wilton. If she sat there long enough 
it was possible that she would get to be like Wilton, to 
look like him, lips and all. Meanwhile, all outdoors 
flared with war colors and sounds. 

Jo Ellen knew that something w T as wrong. It might 
be that all this outdoor show was wrong, as Mona 
Pascoe believed. Or it might be that the wrongness 
was in herself. Then again, it might be that maddening 
slit between the buildings, which on certain days 
seemed narrower than others,*'as if the buildings might 
finally crush her between them. On these days she 
was sure that the trouble was the office, and she could 
stride rapidly from one end of it to the other, to and fro, 
swinging like a caged panther, then slam a record book 
against Mr. Trupp’s partition. She didn’t hate Mr. 
Trupp, but his partition permitted a more rebellious 
sound. 

Her restlessnes, which grew more obstinate in refusing 


THE HIGH PLACE 


113 


to melt for abandoned intervals, gave keen significance 
to an incident that changed her immediate outlook. 

VII 

The change came with an effect of swiftness, of 
fantastic swiftness. It confirmed Jo Ellen’s belief that 
Chance could be impudently casual. Perhaps it wouldn’t 
be Chance unless it had this way of working; and evi¬ 
dently Impudence could be a formidable enemy of 
Plan. You had a notion of planning things, though you 
hated planning. Then came a Mr. Trupp, for 
example. . . . 

Jo Ellen and Mona were eating lunch in a place they 
had chosen as a restless variation upon their tiresome 
formula, and were nearing the end of their light meal 
when Jo Ellen found herself looking up at a small 
person who stood at the end of their table. He had 
stiff light hair and a face that might mean that he was 
youngishly old or oldishly young. His eyebrows rose 
very high as he said, looking at Jo Ellen, 

“Excuse me, but are you a stenographer?” 

“Not a public one,” answered Jo Ellen. 

“Very good! I can explain why I’m asking, if I may 
sit here for a moment. It may look outrageous,” he 
went on as he took the corner of the third chair, “and 
I guess it is. Everything’s been outrageous since 
yesterday. I’ll explain in a moment if you’ll pardon me. 
You know of Lawrence Eberly, the theatrical producer?” 

“I don’t,” said Jo Ellen. 

“That’s fame for you. Anyway, he’s among the 
big ones in the theater world. Important to be with 
him. Important, and also . . . Eh, he’s very prominent 
and successful, I may remark. And he needs a stenog¬ 
rapher at once. Of course, you would say, why not go 
a proper way about it? He did. He said, ‘Harold, get 
me a stenographer. Miss Walsh isn’t coming back.’ 
This was yesterday afternoon. But we’ve been having 


114 


JO ELLEN 


a baby. Frightful. I just remembered I hadn’t eaten 
anything since yesterday. And no stenographer. I 
telephoned about my own trouble. But the stenographer. 

She has to be there. Eberly-” 

“You talk,” said Jo Ellen, “as if a stenographer was 
something you went out and bought in a package.” 

“I don’t blame you at all. For all I know this is 
insulting, my asking you this 'way. But the Eberly 
job is very interesting. Suppose this is unusual? What 
will you care how it happened? Here’s Eberly saying, 
‘Get a stenographer.’ He waves his wand. It seems 
like that. He expects to get one magically. No stenog¬ 
rapher springs out of the floor. There’s me. I’ve 
got to be the magician. But here was the baby. If 
he had asked ior a baby ...” 

“You don’t suppose—” began Jo Ellen. 

“No, I don’t,” interjected Eberly’s factotum eagerly. 
“But here’s Eberly—so hard to get at, with a job 
girls would fall over themselves to land. And I said to 
myself, as soon as I had 1 the coffee, if that girl over there 
should just happen to be a stenographer, and should 
just happen not to think she had a hundred-per-cent 
job, how do you know?—without waiting to go anywhere 
—you don’t pick up a prize in an agency—how do you 
know?—quick, like that—just the way Eberly waves 
his wand-” 

“Where is your office?” asked Jo Ellen, while Mona, 
in a rigid awe, was watching her face. 

“The Climax Building, on Forty-second. Eleventh 
floor. Eberly Productions. See here,” and Harold leaned 
forward with the fingers of an extended hand drawn 
sharply together, “twenty-five dollars to start with, but 

there’s more than that—lots more—if he happens-” 

“ If the girl should turn out to be a miracle. ” 

“Don’t put it that way. I tell you, the thing’s easy. 
Not too much work. Honest. But if you happened to 
pull a hit-” 






THE HIGH PLACE 


115 


Jo Ellen laughed. “How would that be done?” 

“I don’t mean that you’d rush down and climb into 
his lap. No. Fatal. The minute you see him you’ll 
know. Somebody independent like you. Understand 
me, I don’t decide. He does that. I only hand out 
a good tip, you might say. I’m supposed to do more. 
I’m supposed to have exercised profound judgment. 
Maybe I have. If I have, that’s a hit for me. Not 
that he’ll say so. He takes my miracles for granted— 
but if you’re right you’ll like him. Get that? He’s 
a remarkable man.” 

“Was he brought up on a farm?” 

Harold stared. “On a farm? No. He was born in 
the Fourth Ward. Must he be born on a farm?” 

“He mustn't ,” said Jo Ellen. 

If Mona had been awed by a curious look of fascination 
in the presence of adventure that appeared in Jo Ellen’s 
eyes, she was completely dazed when Jo Ellen turned to 
her to remark, “If I took that, you could have Mr. 
Trupp. ” 

Mona’s pale face grew paler, as if she sat at the feet 
of supreme daring. 

“Eberly’ll be there from two o’clock. Why not give 
him the onee-over? There’d be nothing disorderly 
about that. Plain business. It doesn’t matter about 
my being fresh, or anything you might think I am. 
The great thing is getting people together. Ask any¬ 
body about Eberly. Even his enemies ’ll say he’s square. 
My name’s Shaffer. ” 

“I’ll go to see him,” said Jo Ellen, “if you’ll tell me 
one thing. ” 

“It’s a bargain,” and Shaffer’s eyebrows went up 
again. 

“Do I look like a stenographer?” 

“O well!—” Shaffer’s tired grin flickered for a moment. 
“In any of these restaurants at noon there’s an eighty- 
per-cent chance that you are. That’s all there was to it. 


116 


JO ELLEN 


If you ever really knew me I might take the risk of 
telling you what I thought you looked like. I won’t 
say it now. I’ve admitted I’m desperate. And choosing 
when you’re desperate isn’t any compliment. I know 
that. But I hate to fall down with Eberly. You'll 
hate to do that when you know him. As K.C.B. says, 
I thank you. And my apologies to you also,” added 
Shaffer, glancing toward Mona as he got up. 

VIII 

That Shaffer’s connubial anxieties had been deeply 
distracting was confirmed by the gray-haired woman 
whom Jo Ellen found in the office of the Eberly Pro¬ 
ductions. 

“He must have been excited,” remarked this per¬ 
sonage. “He ’phoned me that you were coming, but 
couldn’t tell me your name. Just like him.” 

There was an exchange of names, by which Jo Ellen 
learned that this was Mrs. Pinney. 

“I win a five spot,” remarked Mrs. Pinney, “it 
being a girl. ” 

“You mean the baby?” 

“Yes. He was betting five to one that it would be a 
boy. Imagine Shaffer a father! The man acted nutty 
over the ’phone. You’d think he’d had the baby himself. 
Sit down, Miss Rewer. The chief isn’t here yet. ” 

Mrs. Pinnev’s desk was in the outer office. There were 
a number of open doors, through one of which Jo Ellen 
saw a man with a bookkeeper look. Near the entrance 
was a table at which sat a boy with horn-rimmed glasses 
whose elbows spanned an afternoon paper. A type¬ 
writer pattered jerkily beyond one of the partitions. The 
faint monotone of an electric fan, like the sound of heat, 
held its place through the diluted orchestration of Forty- 
second Street. 

A sound Jo Ellen didn’t notice brought Mrs. Pinney 
up from her desk and drew her away. Presently she 


THE HIGH PLACE 117 

emerged with a gesture. Jo Ellen was to go into the room 
at the front. 

The man at the broad desk did not lift his eyes 
from a letter he was reading. To that first glance he 
had a hard look, a thin hard look, with very deep mouth- 
parentheses and a wrinkled forehead. There were gray 
patches over his ears. Probably he»was forty-five or so. 

He made a movement with his right hand, which Jo 
Ellen interpreted as an invitation to be seated. 

When he had finished the letter he raised his head, 
then put the letter quite completely away, without 
interfering with his fixed look. His face, which had seemed 
wooden, became metallic. Jo Ellen decided that he was 
shocked or annoyed. 

Suddenly he bent slightly forward. 

“How would you like to go on the stage?” 

“I shouldn’t like it at all,” said Jo Ellen. 

He lifted his wiry hands. “Gracious God! I thank 
Thee!” 

“Why are you thankful?” asked Jo Ellen. 

“My dear, I’m thankful for the smallest favors— 
even a little thing like that. W 7 hen they look the way 
you do they always— always —and they show it—I 
feel as if I were dictating to a leading woman. Tires 
me out finally. It would give me a lift, it would take 
off some of the staggering weight that is making me 
prematurely decrepit, to know that there is one girl, 
such as a man might otherwise like to have around, who 
didn’t give a damn for the stage. Of course, you may 
have been tipped off. Shaffer may have primed you.” 

“He didn’t,” said Jo Ellen. 

“Didn’t he find out anything about you?” 

“Not a thing. ” 

A contortion that might have been the equivalent 
or the prophecy of a smile modified Mr. Eberly’s hardness. 

“Wliat do you suppose he thought he was doing?” 

“Mostly,” said Jo Ellen, “I think he was being 


118 JO ELLEN 

excited about a baby. I don’t think you ought to blame 
him for that. ” 

“A baby . . . ! Blame him? I haven’t blamed him. 
It’s punishment enough. But Shaffer-” 

“You mean that you have to know something about 
me?” 

The wrinkles in Mr. Eberly’s forehead twisted into 
a hieroglyph. A flash of ferocity, perhaps a kind of 
weary ferocity, showed for a moment. 

“Shuddering saints! Can’t you see that this is like 
marrying you? I could marry you off-hand, in fact, 
with only the information of my eyes. But to take you 
as a confidential secretary-” 

Jo Ellen finished half of a laugh before she could 
check herself. 

Mr. Eberlv pinned her with an interrogatory glare. 

“I was only thinking,” said Jo Ellen, “that with 
Mr. Shaffer it must have been something like love at 
first sight.” 

Mr. Eberly got up sharply and went over to look into 
Forty-second Street. 

Jo Ellen remarked to the back: “Mr. Shaffer said that 
anybody who knew you would tell me you were square. 
Anybody who knows me will tell you Fm square.” 

“Well, I’ll be damned!” Mr. Eberly spun aroimd with 
his hands twitching in his pockets. “This is one way! 
May I ask where you have worked?” 

“ Only in one place—for nearly a year. I’m there now. ” 

Mr. Eberly wrote down Trupp’s name and telephone 
number, also Jo Ellen's home address, and, at her 
suggestion, Benjamin Bogert and his office number on 
Seventh Avenue. 

“When could you come?” he asked when this was 
done. “To-morrow?” 

“I’ll have to give notice——” 

“Do you think I might be able to make it appear 
that this is urgent?” 





THE HIGH PLACE 


110 


“Perhaps next Monday.” 

Mr. Eberly writhed. “Perhaps-?” 

“I’ll telephone to Mrs. Pinney the first thing in the 
morning. ” 

“Thank you, ” concluded Mr. Eberly with an inflection 
that was like shutting a door. . . . 

Jo Ellen felt that she had closed one door and opened 
another. It was quick work—the more as of leaping 
over things by reason of the loafing intervals behind 
her—this finding Mr. Trupp, mystified at the office, 
appealing for an outward application of his own theory 
about Opportunity, and bringing in Mona Pascoe for 
a confirmatory three-minute interview. There was an 
awkwardness she hadn’t thought of, for the telephone 
rang as this last bit of action was about concluded. When 
she knew by the first of Mr. Trupp’s words that the other 
office was connected, she started out with Mona, but 
not soon enough to avoid hearing the first of Mr. Trupp’s 
speeches. 

“Tell your man Eberly,” rumbled Mr. Trupp, “that 
he’s a robber.” 

Yet Mr. Trupp decided to make her comfortable as 
to the other things he had said, once she was back at 
the end of a reasonable interval. Incidentally, it appeared 
that after the opening challenge to the woman there 
had been some talk with Eberly himself. 

“You’d think,” said Mr. Trupp, “they were hiring 
a cashier for a bank. You really would. I remember 
the day my father sent me. ...” 

IX 

Forty-second Street was a glittering change. To 
come out of the hole in the ground into the tumult 
of Broadway at this spectacular intersection was suffi¬ 
cient to obliterate even the apprehensive discussions of 
home. The family council did not object to change in 
itself, but the manner in which it happened was regarded 



120 


JO ELLEN 


as eccentric; and Eberly Productions inspired misgiv¬ 
ings. The gravity of comment brought Jo Ellen an 
evening of defensive explanation. Even the man-of-the- 
world liberality of Grandmother Bogert was a bit 
quelled. “That theatrical bunch,” she said, “is tough. 
You know what they call Broadway down there— 
Triangle Alley. The Other Woman parades the place. 
She’s scooped up and shoveled into choruses. A decent 
girl can be decent anywhere, but she can have dirty 
going. ” Jo Ellen went to bed smarting from the criticism 
of her impulsive plan. She felt as if she had been con¬ 
victed of turning off a path that was quite sufficiently 
picturesque into a jungle notoriously infested with 
beasts. It was conceded that she would go armed, and 
that her weapon was good, but why prowl? And alone? 

Yet here were girls getting ready to go over into the 
war. If she had felt differently, she might have done 
that. Family ties—nothing stopped you when you 
thought you had to do that. And you would be a heroine. 
She had spoken of this, and how her own city was her 
place in which to go and come and look out for herself. 
Uncle Ben had said something about shows as being 
not mentionable with the life and death matters of war, 
and it was not until she got into bed that she thought 
of an answer. She was ready to say it in the morning, 
with much more, but when Uncle Ben put his arm around 
her shoulders at breakfast time he said, “Size them up. 
You’ll know when the game isn’t right .” It appeared 
that the trial of the new job still awaited testimony. 

The truth was that Broadway, even at Forty-second 
Street, looked quite matter-of-fact on that Monday 
morning. To a seasoned person like Jo Ellen, the Climax 
Building was as prosaic as the Van Veeder. There was 
simply a little more of everything in the landscape. 
There was more of clang and scuffle until you got to 
the appointed quiet of your office, and you found your¬ 
self there with many, instead of being alone. Certainly 


THE HIGH PLACE 


121 


Mrs. Pinney didn’t look like a menace; and Shaffer, 
who had a desk in the same room with Mrs. Pinney, 
carried an effect of sophisticated meekness that never 
seemed like a hazard. Jo Ellen wondered whether any 
of them grew up on a farm. She soon decided that if 
they had, the circumstance was not likely to become a 
subject of conversation. Everything was fearfully 
of Broadway and the moment. New shows were opening 
with dashes of war emotion in them. Last rehearsals 
on later shows were in progress. Younger actors, 
removed by draft or enlistment, were leaving parts to 
be filled. There was the question as to what a war 
winter would mean for the stage, as for other interests; 
as to how humanity was going to behave, and how 
its behavior would affect the rituals. Somebody remarked 
that when the Bastille fell a matinee on the next street 
was not interrupted. There were people who w T anted 
to hold the war as an occupation for the left hand. There 
were others who appeared to think that unless the war 
wrecked everything it wasn’t being taken seriously. 
Very soon it became evident that emotion would find 
one of its chief outlets at the theater; and that the 
workers of the theater w r ere ready for sacrifices, sober 
or hysterical, wherever the fevers of patriotism 
called. 

Jo Ellen’s first glimpses of the theatrical were not 
from the tinsel side. The obscurities seemed more 
definite than the revelations. The ground glass door 
between her little room and Mr. Eberly’s remained 
closed until the buzzer sounded. Her other door, 
leading into the outer office, remained open. There 
were some people who must await audience in the 
outer office as the boy Aaron might elect. Others 
felt free to wander to Jo Ellen’s door to make inquiries. 
Some of these Jo Ellen found impressively peculiar. 
Amazing women, with hand on hip, and shoulder 
against the door frame, asked, “How about him?” 


JO ELLEN 


122 

There were men with experienced faces who came te 
the door with oblique cigarettes to mutter, “No?” 

Mr. Eberly had a private entrance door, as well as 
the.doors into the outer office and into Jo Ellen’s quarters. 
At a later time Jo Ellen heard this private entrance 
alluded to as “the getaway.” That the chief had need 
of the privilege to steal in or out in avoidance of the 
common waiting room was soon to be admitted. Jo 
Ellen acquired a sympathetic participation in the ma¬ 
chinery of protection. It became plain that he couldn’t 
see them all. To watch him wince at a new name was 
sufficient to make one understand how the premature 
furrows came. If Aaron was adamant, there was some 
explanation in the frozen glare he received from Mr. 
Eberly when he thrust himself into the presence. 

There were callers whom Jo Ellen found acutely 
diverting. These were often strange looking, and they 
performed without encouragement. For example, there 
was Jarreck, wffio managed something, and certainly 
must do it savagely. He blazed with desires. His 
exuberant hostility, voiced in a whisper with an edge, 
his face meanwhile extraordinarily busy, was an enter¬ 
tainment in itself. At the beginning Jo Ellen always 
expected that something explosive would certainly 
follow his actual contact with Mr. Eberly. She listened 
for the detonation. When the transmitted murmur 
was, if at all different, softer than usual, she was reassured 
and permitted herself to welcome the visits of Jarreck 
until such time as he should burn out the fuse. 

And then there was Cannerton, w r ho was a play¬ 
wright or an actor or both, the long-faced man with 
the funny lock of hair, who on the first afternoon came 
to Jo Ellen’s door with the air of an habitue. 

“Fair lady, ” he said, “hath thy sainted boss returned?” 

“He hath not,” Jo Ellen replied promptly. 

“A grievous thing,” he murmured, “that thou 
shouldst thus be forced to become the bearer of sad 



THE HIGH PLACE 


123 


tidings. Would it wound thy proud spirit to inform 
thine abject slave just when, or even approximately 
when, his majesty will or might or should or, perchance, 
hath pledged himself to return?” 

“Perhaps after three-thirty you might-” 

“Curses! And I bleed! Three-thirty! The soothing 
alliteration cannot, I fear, stanch my wound. I yearn 
for him, gentle creature, I, a friend of his bosom. I go; 
I shall return. If so thou wilt, when he hath arrived, 
make it snappy.” 

There were certain persons, notably one very beautiful 
blonde girl, of whose importance Jo Ellen became aware 
through the solicitudes of Mrs. Pinney. Mr. Eberly 
being late for an appointment, the blonde girl strolled 
into Jo Ellen’s room to say, quite amiably, 

“What lovely hair you have!” 

“Thanks,” said Jo Ellen. 

“Yes—a natural wave, too?” 

“Always kinks up when it’s damp.” 

“Lucky! Mine flattens right out. Couldn’t do with¬ 
out a permanent.” 

“Your hair is wonderful,” remarked Jo Ellen sincerely. 

“They tell me that. Gonney’s slipping in a gag 
about it. Where’s the old man? Off to enlist or 
something? 

“Are you Miss Farrand? ” 

“ That same. ” 

“He’s expecting you. ” 

“O he’s expecting! He’s the greatest little expecter! 
And isn’t here. That’s what Nugent calls symbolism. 
The man—expecting—and taking his own time.” 

Jo Ellen heard a sound. “He’s here,” she said. “I’ll 
tell him. ” 

When he was late Mr. Eberly always had an air of 
blaming the one who waited. But he was gracious with 
Miss Farrand. 

Although his voice could be very loud, or at least 



JO ELLEN 


124 

very penetrating, he had a low tone for Jo Ellen. She 
concluded that his treatment of her was what you 
would call respectful. Uncle Ben had wanted an early 
report as to his manner. The assumption seemed to be 
that at the first suggestion of a brutality Bogert would 
drop in to break his theatrical head. 

“There’s not much to him,” said Jo Ellen. “I think 
I could throw him myself. But he’s big at the top.” 

“You think he has some bean.” 

“A wonderful bean.” 

“In that case,” said Bogert, “I guess you’re likely 
to be respectful to him. ” 

“O very respectful,” admitted Jo Ellen. 

Her uncle’s word reminded Jo Ellen that Mr. Eberly 
never seemed to use slang, aside from certain jargon 
words of the theater. He w T as to the last an unsolved 
puzzle to her. There was about him something blighted 
and bitter. From her viewpoint he had an effect of 
lonesomeness, perhaps because she fancied him as 
cynically aloof. When he was acrid, and fulfilled the 
promise of his face, he was not so appalling as when he 
became velvety. 

Cannerton described one facet of him when he ex¬ 
claimed, dramatically, with a flip of his cigarette- 
stained fingers, “ He rules me with a rod of irony. ” 

His letters; were terse and cold. There might be a 
different flavor in the few letters he wrote with his 
jerky script. He did not put these in the letter basket, 
presumably dropping them in the mail chute himself 
on his way out. 

Jo Ellen wondered what his intimates, if he had any, 
really thought of him. Evidently he had friends, 
even if you couldn’t assume too much from the number 
of letters that began with a first name. These letters 
were not less crisp. They sounded hurried, perhaps 
because she had grown accustomed to the redundant 
leisureliness of Mr. Trupp’s epistolary style. Mr. 


THE HIGH PLACE 


1 25 


Eberly was always moving to the next thing. The 
momentum bore all the evidences of being unbroken. 
Jo Ellen asked herself whether it was possible that his 
nervous life ever reached a pause; whether there was 
ever a time in any place, alone or in any company, when 
he was less a machine, when he was jolly or even smiled. 

x 

One letter, dictated in early September, became at 
once the most absorbing document Jo Ellen had ever 
been called upon to transmit. 

“Dear Mat,” said Mr. Eberly with a piece of cor¬ 
respondence in his hand, “Will you please ask your son 
to call at four o’clock on Thursday? Yours.” 

The letter Mr. Eberly held took its place in the heap 
she carried with her to her desk. It was not until she 
reached it in the course of her typing that she noticed 
that the sheet signed “ Mat ” bore the heading, “ Matthew 
Lamar, Contractor,” and that the son was Stanley. 

Jo Ellen refused to regard it as one of those fantastic 
coincidences that get into plays and novels. There 
might be a sort of coincidence in the fact that Mat Lamar 
knew Larry Eberly well enough to ask for a job for his 
son just back from the West. But the request had 
another meaning, unknown to the father or the father’s 
friend. It was no coincidence at all. It was a trick of 
Stan’s. He wanted a footing. In his sleuthing way he 
had found out where she was. He would have thought it 
was a coincidence that her chief should be Eberly. She 
doubted whether he intended actually to ask anything 
from Eberly. It was a trick. He would see her somehow 
and establish a quotable basis of acquaintance. She 
felt the blood in her face as she clicked through the 
letter. 

She was with Mr. Eberly at four on Thursday when 
Aaron came in with the slip of paper. 

“Right!” said Eberly. 


JO ELLEN 


1*6 

This meant that Aaron might electrically disappear 
and send in the caller. Also that Jo Ellen might retire. 

She saw Stan pass her door looking straight ahead. 
In five minutes she saw him pass in the other direction 
and heard his quick stride recede. He had not looked 
to right nor left. 

In the momentary interval before the buzzer sum¬ 
moned her she had attached Stan Lamar to Eberly’s 
staff. But in another moment he became detached. 
Eberly started to dictate a letter, then lifted his ’phone. 
“ Get me Zimmer, ” he muttered to the ear at the switch¬ 
board. A flicker of his hand indicated that Jo Ellen was 
free to go back to her machine. Zimmer was the presi¬ 
dent of a scenic corporation. As events proved, he was 
being told to provide, if possible, for the young man who 
would see him on the following day. 

Without knowing exactly what was happening at the 
telephone, Jo Ellen found herself knowing that Stan 
would be placed; that he would be where he could 
hover; that she could no longer think of him as one who 
might break through by adventurous chance, yet who 
conveniently disappeared or might be run away from. 
He thus became immanent, and by intent. He was 
capable of going this long way around to prove something, 
to win something. Mere obstinacy would not have 
lasted so long. He must have cared as he said he cared; 
and this would be amazing .... She began to have 
a new sense of being enveloped. The hazards they had 
fussed about at home were absurdly less than this which 
belonged quite apart, which had nothing to do with 
rush hours, with districts or employments. She began 
to know that it w*as really not an outside hazard but 
something inside herself. . . . Yes, it was herself that 
she was afraid of. Afraid. She had not known much 
about fears. There was always a way of chucking them. 
And they always came from outside, things you could 
laugh at or fight. When the school was afire, when she 



THE HIGH PLACE 


127 


fell out of the tree, when Uncle Ben sat up in bed with 
the crazy look, when she bumped her head diving and 
wondered whether she must strangle before she could 
get her head to the top of the water—any number of 
incidents could confirm her confidence in escaping real 
fears. But this one started under her skin; not pre¬ 
cisely like the feeling you would have at the very edge 
of a high place; more as if a stealing numbness began at 
a moment when you knew it would be necessary to 
leap away. Other feelings boiled up. This was a sinking, 
though it made your heart go. . . . 

Perhaps it started with her always being willing— 
not really wishing but knowing that she was secretly 
willing—to see him once more. Only once more. But 
when she had seen him once more the secret willingness 
was not stifled. It had something to do with knowing 
that he wouldn’t be checked by any ordinary word, 
that even when absent for so long he was persisting. 
Above all, it was the difficulty of that feeling that 
couldn’t be nibbed out. Whatever she did she would 
have to do with that feeling still there. 

The thing to do was to make the next meeting, wher¬ 
ever it might happen, really the last. By being openly 
insulting, terrifically so. It would be like insulting 
the feeling inside of her. All the better. 

The meeting had better happen as soon as possible. 
Any evening when she left the office he might be waiting 

somewhere. She looked for him in the crowds. Four 

* 

days went by. She looked for him on Sunday when she 
had visited the Tices and was skirting the Hill. There 
was a letter from Zimmer, saying that Lamar was 
opportune. He was going to try him in a position vacated 
by a drafted man. There were letters from Marty, 
but no sign from Stan Lamar. Perhaps. . . . 

Then, at the top of the steps into the subway, he 
touched her arm. He was bronzed and smiling. It 
was as if he also were going home. He made space 


128 


JO ELLEN 


for her in the jam at the train door and kept a space 
while they stood during the hot, clattering journey. 
There was a seat for her at Ninety-first Street and 
presently one for him beside her. He told her of his 
trip into the West; about the war horses; that he had 
made some money—not in any profiteering way; there 
was a lot of monev to be made if vou knew horses and 
how to handle men—army men included. He had 
expected to be drafted, and when luck turned the other 
way it looked like a tip. He would wait. If the United 
States wanted him it could have him. Meanwhile, he 
had gone to work again in New York. This was where 
he belonged. 

“I won’t pretend anything,” he said. “I know 
where you are. It gave me an idea. My father has 
known that boss of yours since he was a boy. Don’t 
see each other much—not at all now, I guess—but they 
must have been pretty close once. Eberly’s hard as 
nails, but they say he remembers. A cautious one. 
Had to see me before he would do anything. X-rayed 
me. There's a recommendation. Passed by the censor 
isn’t in it. Passed by Eberlv. You've been passed by 
Eberly! ” 

It was all very adroit. Not a word about past meetings, 
nor a past letter. Nothing to rebuff. Nothing to give 
occasion for saying that this was a last meeting, posi¬ 
tively the last. 

When the train had mounted high at Dyekman Street 
he got off with her. He was going back. He shook 
hands, warmly, but with an avoidance of any lingering 
assumption. 

A few days later he came into the office to see Shaffer. 
The business had to do with scenery. The relationship 
with the Zimmer people was as she had suspected. 
Before leaving he came to her door for a moment, 
simply for the length of a greeting. It could now be 
said that they had met in business. 


THE HIGH PLACE 


129 


It was a relief that he had become mentionable. 
That past which he had ignored she was privileged to 
brush aside. If it came to accounting for him she had 
a choice as to the length of her history. There was, too, 
a kind of protection in not having to stand alone in 
quite the same way. The need to dismiss him did not 
seem so immediate. 

XI 

Marty’s division was to be near Xew York before 
going across. It might, he announced, be many weeks 
before they did sail, but he was sure of a chance for a 
last visit. It would just be for a very little time—maybe 
only twenty-four hours. He wanted to share a few of 
those previous hours with Jo Ellen. 

His coming fell on a Sunday, which he regarded as a 
miracle of good fortune. It had a certain dash, as by 
temporary detachment from immense and dramatic 
happenings. His laugh alternated with a look of dark¬ 
ening thoughtfulness. Uncle Ben noted how his eyes 
followed Jo Ellen. 

The crisp day in late September, with something 
silvery in the sunlight, gave a nervous animation to 
everything connected with the meeting. The special 
evening dinner brought a lot of talk from Uncle Ben. 
Mrs. Bogert was in a jocular mood. Jo Ellen’s mother 
had least to say. 

From the first Jo Ellen knew that Marty would want 
the high place for their parting. It seemed to her 
innocent of him that he should suggest that stroll 
after dinner and find the inevitable path with so trans¬ 
parent a casualness. Going there was, she thought, a 
fresh indication of his persistent sentimentalism. They 
had, in a few months, become so much older than when 
they were there before, and the juvenile traditions 
invested it so tenaciously, that one ought to have expected 
to find it shrunken. Yet it was curiously the same, 
with the same obliterating encirclement of trees, the 




130 JO ELLEN 

same primeval quiet, the same crackling cushion of 
sun-baked leaves. 

When they were seated Jo Ellen knew that he would 
want her to kiss him, and she knew she would kiss him. 
He looked handsome, and a handsome soldier ought 
to be kissed when he was going away. No matter how 
you hated war, you knew he wasn’t to blame, and that 
he meant to do his part well. 

Then Marty surprised her after all by forgetting the scen¬ 
ery and all approaches. He had thought it out terrifically. 

“Jo Ellen, ” he said, taking very firm hold of her hands, 
“will you marry me when I come back from France?” 

“Marry you?” 

The gasp was not contemptuous, or indignant, or 
even evasive. It was simply that for once Marty had 
succeeded in taking her breath away. The very length 
of their acquaintance gave the directness an acute 
novelty. In any vista of a future she had always fancied 
Marty as a sort of poetic friend, who, if his friendship 
ever became ardent, would give liberal circuitous warning 
that could be coped with as occasion might demand. 
The blunt, ultimate challenge had an amazing splash to 
it. Marty was changing. 

“I know,” he was saying, “you may not think I’m 
worth it yet ...” 

“Please don’t tell me,” said Jo Ellen, “you’re going 
to bring home a halo. ” 

“I don’t mean anything like that,” he went on. “It’ll 
only be that I’ve done something—something-” 

“I’m not ready to marry anybody .” 

“Not this minute. It’s a long way off—months and 
months—we can’t tell how long. And I want that to 
carry with me—that you will marry me. Can’t you see 
what a difference it would make—to know that the one 
I’ve always been in love with-?” 

“You haven’t always been in love with me, Marty. 
This is just-” 





THE HIGH PLACE 


131 


Jo Ellen wanted time to think. Time was the one 
thing she couldn’t have. 

“Always,” persisted Marty. “We scrapped a little 
once in a while. But I know. I know it now better 
than ever. I know what I need to go on. I’m surer 
about you than anything else in the world. If I had 
your promise I could report at nine o’clock and tell 
the old war to do what it likes. Jo Ellen, let me have 
it to think of that I own that wild heart of yours!” 

She wished he hadn’t said “wild heart.” It was 
annoying that in her breast there should be a thumping 
at the moment. Heart was all right, but the phrase 
sounded like something he had thought out. If she had 
a little time to think ... 

“I love you, Jo Ellen!” 

Her eyes were turned toward the hollow. She didn’t 
see the trees; she saw Stan Lamar. She felt his hands, 
strong and warm, and the quiver, the deep, wicked sort 
of quiver, that came with their touch. She recalled the 
flash of fear about herself that ran with the tremor. And 
now Marty, who was not a secret, who need not be 
explained or justified, who had the benediction of home, 
who was as convenient and comfortable as a porch 
rocker, was repeating the great word and invoking the 
magic of the supreme adventure. Had she really been 
afraid of Stan? Had her fear of herself only been lulled 
when she was last with him? Would the day come when 
she would again be afraid? Would she be able to say 
to Stan the utterly final No that she had said to herself, 
and stop drifting in the mist of a shameless kind of 
dream? It wasn’t like anything else about her, she 
was sure, that she should again and again have found 
herself groping for a way to shut out Stan for good and 
all. Perhaps promising Marty was the one way. She 
didn’t want to promise Marty, much as she cared for 
him. But a promise . . . 

“I feel,” said Marty fervently, “as if it was all meant 


132 


JO ELLEN 


to be like this. That this high place was chiseled out 
thousands of years ago so that we could sit here and 
look down into our old playground while you said yes. 
Do you know, Jo Ellen, I found that ‘the high place’ is 
in the Bible. Our chaplain told me. It would be a 
thing you could tell a chaplain, if you were on the other 
side, that on our high place ...” 

“Marty,” Jo Ellen said quietly, “I ought to have a 
long time-” 

“Yes!” cried Marty. “A long time to get used to 
it, Jo Ellen. Scotty! Think how long it may be! But 
you know what I want now —before I go—to live on— 
so that I can say to myself, When I get backl I’ll say 
it a million times. Jo Ellen!” 

When he caught her, and held her close, she did not 
resist him. A warm shiver came when she felt his 
lips pressed hard against her own. She closed her eyes, 
but she could see, faintly—very far away—the always 
astonishingly blue eyes of Stan Lamar. 


x 



PART FOUR 


The Bolt 

i 

T HE pledge to Marty had a first effect of simpli¬ 
fying somewhat a world otherwise in great con¬ 
fusion; and, by a consequence Jo Ellen had hoped 
for, Stan seemed at a greater distance. Actually he had 
come very close, but the theory that the promise was 
to be a protection dulled, and at times even quite 
silenced, those speculations about fear which had whis¬ 
pered so disturbingly in Jo Ellen’s mind. There might 
be some doubt as to whether it was the promise or a 
change in Stan that brought the difference in her feeling. 
If there were two reasons instead of merely one, it was 
the easier to forget the apprehensive time. The situation 
was affected somewhat by the fact that Stan was called 
upon to make trips to other cities, one as far as San 
Francisco. He had not expected this feature of his 
work. On the first occasion he spoke of it with im¬ 
patience, but Jo Ellen came to believe that he liked the 
diversities of the travel. Although she had told herself 
that she was not interested in his likes or dislikes, she 
found the mystery of him poignantly interesting. For 
he was still mysterious. In some ways he seemed more 
mysterious than before. As a kind of person he had a 
fascinating obscurity, as belonging to regions not to be 
fathomed. He wasn’t comfortably understandable 
like Marty. If Marty knew a thing you soon saw how he 
came to know it. She met a good many people who had 
something of this effect, who, in the twist of their talk, 
in the things they laughed at or were silent about, 

133 


134 


JO ELLEN 


suggested abysses of experience lying somewhere beyond 
the shell of common sight. But these people were not 
thrust upon her as lives to be translated. 

She soon came to see that in this particular region 
of activity nothing was really surprising, that you 
were not subject to certain sorts of question, that you 
could do anything you chose to do without having to 
explain. You could, for instance, go to lunch under any 
circumstances that amused you. Evidently it would not 
have been considered discreet to lunch with anyone 
where Eberly might be an observer. To be seen sitting 
with his secretary might naturally provoke dangerous 
speculation. However, Eberly always lunched at a grill 
that was monastically male. When he had been seen at 
dinner with a woman it was always in the company of a 
third person. The assumption appeared to be that such an 
incident was inevitably related to the crisis of a contract. 

She finally accepted an invitation to lunch which 
Shaffer advanced with the skilled innocence she came 
to expect of him. He made no allusions to the office. 
His talk about the theatrical business was discreetly 
vague. Jo Ellen asked about many things, and he 
appeared to be deeply concerned to avoid showing how 
astonishing he thought some of her questions were. He 
preferred to tell about the baby and the sheer wonder 
of Mrs. Shaffer. Both the doctor and the nurse had 
assured him that not only in weight but in brightness 
the baby was one of those real events that sometimes 
startle obstetrical science. In fact her size was embar¬ 
rassing. When they said three weeks old, people thought 
they were joking or putting over something. She looked 
more like six months. 

Shaffer told Jo Ellen she could, of course, have tickets 
for any show she wanted to see. He made it clear that 
attending to such things would always be one of the 
easiest things he did. Jo Ellen had been to the theater 
very seldom and the new privilege had many excitements. 


THE BOLT 


135 


These excitements were communicated to the home 
group. It was unavoidable that they should reverberate. 
Myrtle Fleck acquired a fresh interest in the Rewers. 
Jo Ellen had found many reasons to distrust Myrtle, 
who had made unsuccessful attempts to tolerate dif¬ 
ferent forms of work and was always quarreling with her 
mother. For neighbor reasons it was necessary to make 
pretenses in explanation of the relaxed ties. Certain 
school friends, and even persons of the dignity of Mr. 
Sedley Mason, gave an enlivened attention to Jo Ellen’s 
goings and comings. One who could evoke theater 
tickets was made to feel the pressure of a peculiar and 
unmistakable popularity. 

To plays themselves Jo Ellen was fully responsive, 
though a play as a play soon lost any unvarying glamour. 
She began to like one more than another in a more 
critical way. She found herself gathering up the patois 
of the professionals. But the philosophy of the theater 
as an institution seemed to be more obscure than if 
she had been somewhere else. She heard much about 
the art of the stage and about the business of the theater. 
Occasionally these seemed to have a close relationship, 
but just what the relationship was she never was able 
to make out. Often the art and the business appeared 
as enemies, which was funny. Again they were sobbing 
on each other’s necks, which could be uproariously 
funny, too. Everybody agreed about a full house and an 
S.R.O. sign. Beyond this point there was bitter and 
unending confusion. If a play was good it had a run. 
If it was enough better it was shut down in a week or 
two. Evidently there was a certain kind of bad play 
that was sure of big houses for an interval that had to be 
covered somehow. And there was a certain kind of 
good play that wouldn’t have big houses at first, but 
might run for years. The sure-fire bad play thus became 
a factor in the business of the theater as a sort of dirty 
fellow who was sent out to hold the crowd until the 


136 


JO ELLEN 


good play got its clothes on. There were theories, 
with pathos in them, about managers who put on nine 
poor plays to earn money enough to afford the sacri¬ 
ficial idealism of putting on one good play that couldn’t 
be appreciated but that would appease the chaste 
hungers of the idealistic managers. Every appeal was 
directed at last to the public, the kind of public that 
came to Broadway shows. For this public there was 
both cordiality and contempt. To both the artists 
who were cynics and the managers who w^ere moralists 
it was the common enemy. It belittled the best plans. 
It loved to surprise by approval and to kill gayly by 
turning its thumbs down. If it could be appeased for 
a given number of weeks, the play could go to the rest 
of the country and make money. 

Jo Ellen liked to wonder about Eberly’s point of view. 
She never succeeded in piecing together anything like 
an answer to her query. She knew he must wish to 
give “them” what they wanted. She knew, too, that he 
had a fathomless contempt for “them.” It was plain 
that he believed profoundly in the potency of some 
actors. Yet he treated all actors as if they were babes 
in the wood. He went further and excoriated them as 
driveling fools, as grasping upstarts, or as pitiful 
hangers-on. Money—there had to be money; money 
meant that there was approval; approval meant trimming 
and sacrifice. Sacrifice of what? This was never to be 
discovered. When Cannerton said, “It'll knock their eyes 
out,” and Eberly said, “That’ll go over,” she couldn’t be 
sure that they were thinking of the same sort of thing. 
Cannerton said to her one day, “The sickest feeling, 
sister, is when you wait for the laugh and it doesn’t come.” 
Evidently, then, the things that were expertly expected to 
go over sometimes didn’t. The disappointments of the 
artists and the business people seemed, after all, to be 
much alike and to have the same cause. They all waited 
for the laugh. It was the public that laughed last. 


THE BOLT 


137 


There was an interest that transcended the theater, 
and, as the months moved, this interest touched Jo 
Ellen with an increasing emphasis. The emotions of 
the war stirred the theater as they stirred its audiences. 
Jo Ellen heard and saw a great deal of the war work 
by theater people. Eberly was on several committees, 
in whose activities Jo Ellen was now and again called 
upon to represent him. She was a member in her own 
name on other committees. She was drawn into the 
work of a group of women who concerned themselves 
in the relief of family distresses brought on by the war. 
She found that she was not alone in discovering the 
irrelevancy of theory or conviction in the presence of 
individual disaster. Thus she found that hating war was 
very simple, but that living with humanity while a war 
was going on was full of complexities that had a misery 
of their own. 

ii 

In those after days when Jo Ellen had so much time 
to look back upon it, that period of the war seemed to 
be marked, as by varicolored splashes on a calendar, 
by meetings with Stan Lamar and letters from Marty 
Simms. The letters were lover letters, frankly and ful- 
somely assuming all betrothal privileges. Their censored 
vagueness left Marty at a disadvantage in the matter 
of news. Tales of experience must be confined chiefly 
to amusements, or to excitements that did not trace 
any intelligible passage of the huge real drama which 
for so long had reddened the horizon of the world. 
When you would have cared to know about some mighty 
assault, it was a bit flat to get some joke about a canteen. 
He liked to repeat “When I get back.” And there were 
instances of a quivering fervency in speaking of the 
high place, or of some trivial incident at the Hill. Once 
he pleaded for a lock of her hair. This she ignored, 
after contemplating for a long time an imaginary 
picture of the circumstances in which he would 


138 


JO ELLEN 


unfold such a gift. She fancied that a girl with black 
hair, or even blonde hair, might have found acquiescence 

easier. 

It astounded her that Stan should give no sign of 
any suspicion as to Marty’s claims. He knew she received 
letters from him. She had quoted one of them at a time 
when she thought Stan had begun to have a confident 
manner. But if he had a suspicion he never betrayed 
it. He acted as if nothing mattered but his moment. 
Some turn of a play set her to thinking about conscience, 
and the difference between conscience and mere shrewd¬ 
ness. It was a difference she found it hard to figure out. 
Had she a conscience? The play said that women really 
had very little; that what passed with them for conscience 
was actually only a trickiness, sometimes an amazingly 
involved ingenuity of self-interest. Was it a lack of 
conscience that had induced her never to mention Stan 
at home? Wasn’t not mentioning him an indication 
that her conscience, or whatever took the place of that, 
knew there would be disapproval? Her argument with 
herself was that her mother would catch the name, as 
Jo Ellen had, and would act in the light of the traditions. 
Her mother wouldn’t know how cautious she was and 
how safely, at arm’s length, she kept the hazard. Her 
mother wouldn't know of any possible injustice in a 
tradition. She wouldn’t know that the meetings were 
securely formal. Jo Ellen had told her mother about 
Marty, but rather as if that had been an asking only, 
as if the answer still fluttered and had not yet alighted. 
Her way of conveying this impression to her mother 
had the effect upon herself of saying that the answer 
awaited verification, as though the document of devotion 
were still to be signed. If the implication of promise was 
actually there, it was exacted under the duress of a 
crisis that was in so many cases making the world a liar. 

Finally, she mentioned to her mother a meeting with 
Stan at the office. 



THE BOLT 


139 


The mother was very brief. 

“A bad egg,” she said. 

After a pause, to which she gave no color, Jo Ellen 

o clrpn 

“What did he do?” 

“Do? I don’t know. But they were always in trouble 
about him. He was a wild one. Ran away once or 
twice, I understood. ” 

“I guess he has settled down,” said Jo Ellen quietly. 

Mrs. Rewer was obdurate. “I once heard somebody 
say, about another man, that he might settle down 
without ever being able to settle up.” 

So that it would be an uphill matter to make Stan 
excusable. At that particular time Jo Ellen could say 
to herself that making him plausible was not a thing 
she had any wish to do; that she was even glad of the 
barrier. But there were other times when she felt 
accused and guilty; not so guilty in what she might 
manage not to tell, as in the loose way she considered 
that conscience thing. Again, after some cynical cyclone 
of talk at the office, w T hen a group that belonged very 
much to raw Broadway was shattering codes and 
giving a comic dishevelment to honest things, she felt 
as if she had forgotten to be grown up. She was no longer 
a child, even if she still slept in a garden of innocence, 
or one that might look like a garden of innocence if 
you didn’t talk too much to Lot Mallin, or Emma 
Traub, or didn’t inquire too deeply about Myrtle Fleck, 
for example. 

Postponing—that was what she was doing; even 
after Armistice Day and the almost concurrent letter 
that told her Marty w r as in a hospital but would be 
on his feet again in a little while. At the last, and quite 
without regard to Marty, she w r ould break off meetings 
with Stan. She knew precisely how she should say 
the thing that was to be said. Her formula was so 
fixed and unflinching that she twice went to a matinee 


140 


JO ELLEN 


with him, and danced with him at a war-relief festival 
in which the business and art of the stage accomplished 
an almost hysterical alliance. 

A few days after the dance she encountered him while 
on a mission to a rehearsal. Suddenly he was standing 
beside her in the shadow of a stage drop in front of 
which, picked out sharply by the flare of a standlight, 
a cast was working. It seemed that at first she could 
see only the glitter of his eyes and the effect shot into 
her mind as symbolizing her thrilling distrust. The 
distrust was always as real as if it had a volume of 
evidence to back it up. And the thrill was real. Life 
evidently arranged things in that fashion. < 

On her way out he was beside her in a dark passage. 
He contrived to halt her in talk. A thin shaft of light 
struck across her face. She could scarcely see him at all. 

‘‘It isn’t fair,” he said in a low tone that quite missed 
his managed level, “that you should hold me off always. 
A man gets desperate. ” 

“If you’re a desperate character—” began Jo Ellen. 

Then he seized her, by a strategy he might have 
meditated in detail, and kissed her on the lips. 

“You stupid fool!” she cried angrily, with a rather 
unfeminine fling of her arm that thrust him thudding 
against the bricks of the passage. As sudden as either 
gesture was the change he saw and heard while his 
lips parted to speak. Her anger was as if thrust aside. 

“We’ll call this the last of it,” she added coolly. “I 
ought to have been able to say that long ago. I’m glad 
the business is done with. ” 

“Ellen! I’m damned sorry-” 

“I’m damned sorry, too,” and Jo Ellen plunged 
through the black doorway into the lighter space that 
led to the lobby. 

hi 

It was beginning to snow. Absurdly, the snow made 
her think of Marty in the hospital. By now he would 



THE BOLT 


141 


be out of the hospital and perhaps on his way home. 
Anyhow, he was not being snowed on in a trench. She 
wished she were eager for him, wholly eager for anyone. 
Probably there was such a thing as an unquestioning 
eagerness, an utterly hungering wish that was quite 
through wfith thinking. It would be wonderful always 
to know just what you wanted. Of course, there would 
remain, after you knew, the getting of what you wanted. 
But it would be like knowing where you were going. 

She didn’t really want Marty the way she ought to 
want him if . . . 

And then it was a crisp Sunday morning in February, 
when shoes screeched in the Inwood paths, and Billy, 
who had been investigating allegations about what 
the ice was doing in the Harlem, burst in with the news 
that a certain soldier was coming. 

It was Marty, tanned, grinning over the collar of his 
army overcoat—and limping. 

Perhaps the limp was really slight, but it had an effect 
for which you could not be prepared. 

The limp was not as of being crippled; it was simply 
as of being marked. It was, indeed, not unbecoming 
in the swing it gave to his eager stride. Yet it became 
to Jo Ellen the dominant note in the picture of his coming, 
of his hurrying up the steps as if a limp meant nothing 
at all. Something in the dissonance gave Jo Ellen 
a catch in the throat, and held her where she could 
watch him through the window without running to the 
door as her mother did. It carried a thrall. 

She knew that she would marry him. 

IV 

They were married in the odd little church a few 
yards from Broadway when June was very young. 

The time fell as it did, first, because Jo Ellen, as the 
price of marrying so soon, had exacted the privilege of 
not breaking with Eberly (or making confession) for 


142 


JO ELLEN 


a few months at least; second, because Eberly was to be 
away for three weeks in June and had suggested this as 
a vacation period. 

They could not have a honeymoon trip just then, 
because Marty was to make sacrifice to a great business 
opportunity, an opportunity over which he was exultant. 
He was to be head of a department in a manufacturing 
plant owned by a lieutenant he knew—the close friend 
of his buddy Pearson. This important new adventure 
began in April, and although friendship could have 
accomplished a leave of absence, much would accrue 
from the strategy of deferring the absence until certain 
important developments had been worked out in the 
plant. These might make it an immense business ad¬ 
vantage not to interrupt the work until the following year. 

“I tell you,” he said, “it takes heroism to give up 
a wedding trip!” But he held that the romantic sub¬ 
stitute had much to be said for it. 

They fitted up a three-room flat on West Nineteenth 
Street from which he had but a ten minutes’ walk to 
the plant. To this enterprise the two mothers made 
contributions of various kinds. Uncle Ben contributed 
a great deal of advice and five crackling new twenty 
dollar bills. When Grandmother Bogert learned of this 
detail she snapped out: “I’ll match you!” It appeared 
that Marty had actually saved a hundred on the other 
side (he had drawn a sergeant’s pay for five of the months) 
and w T ith his savings bank money of three hundred odd 
and another three hundred his father gave as a wedding 
gift, he seemed to feel rich. “But it isn’t how rich I am. 
It’s how rich I’m going to be!” he said. His salary w T as 
fifty dollars a w T eek. Since Jo Ellen w^as now T drawing 
forty, the combined income loomed as a bulwark against 
any disaster until the assured progress of Marty should 
hasten, if it still remained to be hastened, Jo Ellen’s 
resignation—“and the loss of all the theater tickets,” 
added Mrs. Bogert, when this chanced to be mentioned. 


THE BOLT 


143 


Discussion as to the program of the wedding day 
produced activity in Uncle Ben’s hairy fist. 

“There’s got to be a ball game!” 

But he thought of Marty’s limp almost as soon as he 
had said it, and passed to other picturesque suggestions. 
When it came to pass, that wedding supper, served 
behind a special screen, feverishly constructed by Bogerts 
on the verandah, was the crowning feature; and this 
would not be in disparagement of the Tice family’s 
jazz band, whose performance was admitted to be a real 
triumph; Marty’s father, with his cropped iron-gray 
head, was very jocular. Mrs. Simms appeared to make 
an effort to appear gracious. 

“Icicles!” muttered Jo Ellen’s grandmother. Mrs. 
Bogert tried to recall the saying about a skeleton at the 
feast. It was something like that. But she mustn’t 
say it, even to Jo Ellen’s mother. 

Uncle Ben had wanted Marty to wear his uniform, 
Jo Ellen said no. “He’s made it honorable,” she said, 
(she remembered, long afterward, how he flushed) “but 
we’re through with the war.” 

As for clothes, it is to be remarked that Mrs. Bogert 
was the smartest figure at the church. Her hat had a 
strong French accent. It was indeed a bit startling, 
and occasioned the remark from her son, “Mother, 
the millinery business doesn’t pay you wages for 
nothing!” Yet the Grandmother secretly exulted 
in the lovely flopping white hat she achieved for 
Jo Ellen. 

One of Jo Ellen’s school chums, who now managed 
a garage, presented the service of the car that was to 
give the “going away” effect and carry bride and groom 
to the door of their new home. It was a distinguished- 
looking limousine. Just as it drew away out of the 
laughter and shouting and the tinkle of the rice, Jo 
Ellen saw Lot Mallin, her mouth open, standing with 
her stick beside the road. 


144 


JO ELLEN 


v 

Marty held her hand with an ecstatic tightness. 

“Alone at last!” he said, and leaned over to kiss 
her cheek. 

It was like him to say such a thing, but in the rush 
of the moment she simply was conscious of this fact. 
She couldn’t think connectedly of anything until the 
world stopped spinning. Yet Marty had thought her 
the coolest one of the party. He told her so. “You 
kept your head all right!” he exclaimed in a possessive 
pride that accented his glowing look. 

They floated down Broadway. 

“Did you hear what Dr. Parker said . . . ?” The 
ceremony (they did a lot better than the rehearsal), 
the way Uncle Ben danced, that silver at the last minute 
from Marty’s Missouri aunt, the way Pearson circum¬ 
vented the jokers who were to tie something on the 
back of the car—they were soon gathered up by the whole 
medley of interesting circumstances that belonged to 
the whirl of the day. Jo Ellen laughed about Emma 
Traub’s solemnity, and Tice’s drumming, and the way 
Billy dropped the ice cream, and how her high-school 
crony, Pauline, who had been bridesmaid, slipped back¬ 
ward on the steps with the bouquet. Marty watched her 
face while she chattered, and put an arm about her. 

The blur that was Broadway became another streak¬ 
ing margin. 

“I wouldn’t change it!” exclaimed Marty. “I 
wouldn't be going to any train or boat! No! Think of 
it! To our own little nest.” 

“ Please don’t call it a ‘nest,’ ” returned Jo Ellen. 

“Well, anything you like so long as you admit that 
it’s great. Great! Did you notice that they’re fixing 
up the garden in the yard over toward the left? The 
flat’s a little wonder. It’s a regular place! Right-o, 
here’s Nineteenth. Seems like three minutes. ” 


THE BOLT 


145 


Marty had a dollar ready for the chauffeur, and the 
key ready for the house door. He led the way to the 
“nest” on the second floor, regretting that he couldn’t 
have his arm about her as they went up the stairs for 
the first time as man and wife. 

Perhaps he had turned to express this regret; perhaps 
he had been attempting to leap the last steps. His 
stumble always seemed unaccountably violent. He 
lay prone on the landing a few feet from their door, 
and a sharp cry, partly muffled by his closed teeth, 
told the story of the twinge. 

He tried to speak as she bent over him with her 
solicitous questions, but it was not for an appalling 
number of seconds that he rolled over and braced 
himself with his hands. 

“Something’s happened to that old leg of mine.” 

“We’ll get at it,” said Jo Ellen encouragingly. “Don’t 
strain it. I can help you. ” 

He handed her the key which he had been about to 
use. She ran into their rooms to turn on the light. 

When she came out he was sitting with a dazed look, 
his back against the wall of the passage. 

“Something wrong with . . . my legs . . . both of 
them. What do you . . . ?” 

“Just the shock of tumbling,” Jo Ellen assured him. 
“Imagine you’re a soldier man and I’m a nurse. Do 
they ever drag you like this . . . ?” She did drag him, 
by the shoulders into the living room. Here in the 
stronger light she saw that his face, which first had 
gone white, was crimsoning. 

“My God!” 

He looked up at her with a kind of glittering terror. 
While she stammered words that were meant to cheer 
him, she saw his face sag in misery. No, it was not 
pain, he said. That was better. It was just that . . . 
something . . . “My God,” he repeated, reaching 
out to clutch her wrist. “Our wedding night!” 


146 


JO ELLEN 


“What of it?” she jeered defiantly. “The night 
you’re hurt s the night you must be looked after. I’ll 
get a doctor in a minute. First ...” She went about 
the business of getting him upon the green sofa, which 
was of a shortness that made it necessary to place 
him at a slight angle, so that his feet might rest on a 
hurriedly summoned chair. 

“ . . . Now. Will you be patient till I can find a 
doctor person?” 

She saw now that his face was wet with tears. He 
was sobbing. 

“Thank you, Jo Ellen dear. I’m . . . sorry. God 
knows I’m ...” 

She had thrown aside her hat. She put it on again 
and went out. She raced eastward, for she had remem¬ 
bered a doctor’s sign near the corner. This doctor was 
not in. The door belonging to the sign on the next 
block was opened by the doctor himself, a scowling man 
with a sallow face. 

“My husband,” Jo Ellen faltered on being assured 
that he was the doctor, “who was wounded in the war, 
has fallen and hurt himself terribly. I wish you could 
come right away. ” 

“Right away?” 

The scowl seemed to debate this. 

“Please come right away,” urged Jo Ellen. “His 
legs ...” 

“Where do you live?” 

“Just on the next block.” She told him the number 
and floor—“at the back,” she added. 

“You run and tend to him. I’ll be along in five 
minutes. ” 

Jo Ellen did run back. Marty had twisted into a 
sitting position on the sofa. He sobbed again when 
he saw her. 

“He’s coming. In five minutes. You must stay as 
I put you.” 


THE BOLT 147 

He submitted to being stretched out again with his 
feet on the chair. 

“It isn’t hurting so badly?” 

“No,” he said. “The pain ... it isn’t that. But 

—don’t you see ... I can’t;move . . . here-” he 

ran his trembling fingers over the thighs. “Numb. 
Funny feeling. You don’t think, do you-” 

“Don’t let us think until the doctor comes. If you’ll 
be good I’ll go down and watch and fetch him in.” 

The five minutes seemed to have the dimensions of 
an hour. She thought it an outrage that he should 
not be breathless when he came. 

“Well, young man, ” he grunted when Jo Ellen brought 
him in, “what have you been doing?” 

Marty stared with his terror-stricken eyes. 

“I don’t know,” he said. 

The doctor took off Marty’s coat and vest. 

“You were hurt in the war.” 

Marty nodded. 

“Where was it?” His fingers were busy. 

“In the back . . . lower. Yes . . . there.” 

“Where I’m touching you now?” 

“Yes.” 

“Does that hurt?” 

“A little. That’s where the pain got me when I 
tumbled.” 

“You were in the hospital over there.” 

“Yes.” 

“An operation?” 

“They had to sew me. It was a gash.” 

“From a shell, I suppose.” 

Marty repeated with a curious absent sound, “A shell. ” 

The doctor was silent while his fingers rested on 
Marty’s wrist. 

“You’ll have to be patient until we see what’s hap¬ 
pened. You gave yourself a jolt.” Then he looked 
up at Jo Ellen. “A glass of water.” 




148 


JO ELLEN 


Jo Ellen hurried into the little kitchen and heard 
the doctor following. With the glass, unfilled, in her 
hand she turned to him. “Is it anything—anything 
serious?” 

“Serious? It’s serious to be hit by a fragment of 
shell—in the spinal region. You don’t want me to 
lie to you, do you? A lesion—this may have completed 
it. That would be serious.” He was opening his drug 
case, and Jo Ellen dumbly filled the glass at the faucet. 

The doctor said, “Not so much,” then dropped a 
pellet into the glass. 

“Put him to bed,” he said, “and keep him quiet.” 

It was as he spoke that his eyes followed a white 
speck—perhaps it had rested in Jo Ellen’s hair—followed 
it on its way to the floor. As his foot crunched the grain 
of rice he asked bluntly, 

“When were you married?” 

“This afternoon,” answered Jo Ellen and understood 
his intent glance. 

“And you not being an experienced nurse,” he con¬ 
tinued casually, “I'll give you a lift—I mean him a 
lift. Get the bed ready.” Glancing at the glass, into 
which he decided to drop another pellet: “He’ll sleep. 
Keep him quiet in the morning until I come.” 

Having swallowed the drink, Marty was gathered 
up by the doctor and carried into the bedroom. 

Jo Ellen sat on the edge of the sofa, her hands knotted. 
She knew that the doctor looked at Marty’s back. She 
heard the doctor say: “You’ve roughed it and seen 
things. Keep your nerve. Don’t worry. I’ll look you 
up early tomorrow. ” She had an impression of the 
doctor sitting beside the bed, and that he said something 
in a low tone to Marty. It might have been simply 
the word “quiet.” The silence became frightful. Why 
didn’t the doctor go? 

At last he came out and retrieved his hat and druse 


case. 


THE BOLT 149 

It seemed to Jo Ellen that a sentence of awful silence 
had been imposed upon the world. 

With his hand on the knob of the door the doctor 
turned, then moved over to where she stood, in a stiff 
daze. 

“Too bad,” he said, with a hand on her shoulder. 
“I’m as sorry as if ... as if I had knowm you both. 
You look like the kind that would be plucky. Don’t 
you worry either. Go to bed. He won’t wake till 
morning. ” 

She stood beside the closed door. There seemed to be 
only one thing that had to be settled at once. Should 
she telephone to Marty’s mother? It would be a knife 
in her throat to do it, but if it had to be done—at once 
—she w T ould do it. 

Very likely his mother would not have reached home. 

She might still be at Inw f ood ... No, she couldn’t 
call Inwood. 

In the morning . . . after the doctor had said his 
say . . . after Marty woke up. Yes, in the morning 
She was sure Marty wouldn’t wish her to call his mother 
yet. 

She sat again on the edge of the sofa, her eyes fol¬ 
lowing the features of the room, all that had been 
placed by their collusion. The effect was very good. 
Particularly “homey,” Marty had insisted. 

She unhooked the shoulder flap of her dress and 
began to cry silently. 

VI 

Half undressed, she lay curled on the sofa, staringly 
awake, for a long time. The walls of the room seemed 
to stare back out of the dark. Street lights filtered 
through the two open windows to create fantastic 
shadows. Occasional street noises had a cruelly indif¬ 
ferent inflection. Sometimes they seemed contemptuous, 
or to be whispering jokes about the w T ay things happened 
in the world, things people tried to hide or to pretend. 


150 


JO ELLEN 


There was, too, a fearful solemnity in the silence, and 
even in the sounds, as if the monstrous breathing of 
life went on with no regard at all for anyone’s individual 
miseries. If you were very happy you were willing to 
be alone with your happiness. You were glad the rest 
of life didn’t interfere. Happy lovers, for instance, 
hated intrusions. Perhaps they didn’t ask life to look 
the other way. They simply didn’t care a whoop about 
the rest of life. When you were unhappy you wished 
life would relent and lend a hand, or at least show a 
decent interest. But it wouldn’t do that. And it was 
best that it should be so. The present situation proved 
that. Intrusion would magnify the calamity ... if 
it was a calamity. There was no way of knowdng that 
in the morning it might not turn out that Marty’s hurt 
was less a disaster than it had seemed. The shock of 
the stumble had done something. The doctor’s face 
indicated that he knew precisely what it had done. 
But doctors made mistakes, and they had little tricks 
to fool you—for good reasons, no doubt. They couldn’t 
tell you everything. Getting Marty into bed and doping 
him might mean much or little. It might mean a night’s 
sentence or a life sentence. You were free to go on 
guessing what the doctor might mean by this or that. 
As for this third figure which she had rushed out to 
find, there w^as the doctor side of him and the man 
side of him—say the gentleman side of him. You couldn’t 
be sure which side w^as speaking. Perhaps in the morning 
he would be more completely the doctor. 

In the morning . . . 

Yes, in the morning—that is, when it was daylight— 
when Marty w r oke up, when it w r as the day after the 
wedding, you wouldn’t be asking questions of the dark¬ 
ness. You would know something, and it w^ould make 
a lot of difference to know, whatever you might know. 
It would make a lot of difference to be able to speak. 
In the morning, unless the doctor was wTong and Marty 


THE BOLT 


151 


was quite recovered, you could tell your own mother 
and Marty’s mother, you could cry out from the secret 
place and summon others to where the aloneness was 
to have been . . . 

They had never been alone. At the very threshold 
of aloneness she had to call a stranger. And the stranger 
had left a drug to stand guard over Marty. It was as 
if a specter sat in there holding Marty still . . . until 
the morning. 

Then there was a gray light in the little parlor. She 
had been asleep. It was very early, for the light was 
faint. Perhaps the clink of the milkman’s bottles or 
some other street sound had aroused her. She got up, 
and found that she felt stiff. It would be the cramped 
position in which she had been lying for the hours 
between. 

She w r ent to the bedroom door. There was no sign 
that Marty had moved. His clothes had been flung 
over a chair. His face looked pink and comfortable, 
as if his body didn’t know what had happened or had 
forgotten about it. 

She tiptoed to their tiny bathroom and bathed her 
face. The mirror said that she looked drunken. 

The bride. Her hair had looked very pretty yesterday, 
when some one was saying “the bride” every few mo¬ 
ments. After she had busied herself with it for a time, 
and had found the house dress, hanging primly among 
the things she had arranged w T ith precise care earlier 
in the w r eek, she felt better prepared to meet the fully 
widened eyes of day. 

There was something expectant about the appearance 
of the kitchenette. She lighted the gas stove, and put 
on w r ater to boil. A cup of coffee would be a bracer. 
The morning ritual of the dumb-waiter had been explained 
by the janitor, who had something wrong with his 
larynx and spoke in a husky treble. How queer the 
voice was and how oddly the janitor walked, occurred 



152 


JO ELLEN 


to Jo Ellen as she investigated the dumb-waiter for the 
milk bottle. The dumb-waiter was empty. It was too 
early for everything. However, there was the condensed 
milk, of which two cans stood side by side on one of 
the pantry shelves. Marty had laughed at her way of 
dramatizing each of the shelves. . . . 

If there had been a near sound she would have turned 
swiftly—oh, yes! with an exultant swiftness, that would 
express the secreted hope of the night—ready to comfort 
Marty, shuffling in his pajamas and telling her that 
he was all right. But there was no sound except that 
faint intonation as from a whispered chorus of streets— 
the mutter that seemed to make loneliness audible. 
Very likely there were thousands of people in thousands 
of shut-in corners of the city. ... Of course. Every¬ 
thing was multiplied in a city. Yet not quite this. . . . 

She drank a cup of coffee, and sat staring into^the 
straggling green of the yards and particularly, perhaps, 
at a fire escape on which there was a bird cage. * The 
bird was hopping about with an early-morning enter¬ 
prise. It had no discernible note, but it gave an impres¬ 
sion of being pleasurably occupied within its wired 
world. From a window directly opposite a girl in her 
night-dress, with her hair pinned in a tight knot, thrust out 
her head to look at the sky. Sometimes the sky was very 
important. Sometimes it didn’t matter. Yet Jo Ellen 
was glad that it wasn’t raining at the moment. In fact, 
it would have seemed particularly pitiful to have it rain. 

Suddenly she felt impelled to go to the door of the 
bedroom. 

Marty was sitting up. His legs dangled over the side 
of the bed and he was clutching at them with inept 
hands. Before he saw her she heard him muttering, 
“My God! My God!” 

VII 

There was to be no reprieve. 

“O Jo Ellen!” 


THE BOLT 


153 


He held out his hands to her as she hurried forward. 
The sight of her verified the disaster, and as he grasped 
her he was repeating, “0 my God!” 

She had meant not to cry again, but there was some¬ 
thing in his misery that caught her up. It was as if, 
after all, he were surprised, as if he, too, had thought 
there might be some softening of the stroke. He tried 
to tell her that when he first opened his eyes he thought 
it might have been a dream. It was just the sort of 
thing you might dream, just exactly. There was nothing 
about it that was like anything real. . . . And then— 
at the first movement—he knew that it was real, that 
there had been the stairs, and the doctor, and the 
telling him to be still at the very time when he had 
wanted to tell her. . . . 

She began at the morning and told him how she had 
been careful not to be noisy. She wanted to make 
the rest after the shock as long and as perfect as she 
could, thinking that maybe . . . Yes, she had hoped, 
hoped that when he awakened it would be better, that 
whatever the doctor meant might be the wrong meaning. 
Doctors often had everything all wrong. How could 
they know how strong people were? They had to guess. 
Even now- 

She drew away from him, her hands on his shoulders. 

“Look here, Marty. We’ve got to take a brace. 
You’ve had a shock—a little thing, you might say, 
but a shock to the hurt place in your back. It may 
pass off, don’t you see? If you’re just careful. Just 
careful now. We’ll fool the doctors yet. Fool them. 
We’ve got to be patient for a little while. When he 
comes-” 

His eyes were holding intently as she spoke, noticing 
that there was poor teamwork between her eyes and 
her lips. 

“W T e’re fooling each other, aren’t we?” he said wist¬ 
fully. “We both know it’s all up-” 





154 


JO ELLEN 


“I don’t know any such thing!” cried Jo Ellen. 
“And you don’t either. Nobody can know yet. Wait 
until we have a specialist look you over. You may 
need a little mending. Other people have been mended, 
and have walked-” 

“You’re a game sport, aren’t you, Jo Ellen?” He had 
one of her hands and was patting the round white 
forearm that emerged from the short-sleeved house 
dress. “A game sport.” 

“I’m a man’s wife,” she said, standing before him, 
“and a man’s wife, under these circumstances, ought 
to be hustling to get him a cup of coffee. Meanwhile 
friend husband isn’t to be too fresh about moving around 
until the doctor has another look-in.” 

His eyes followed her as she flashed kitchen-ward. 

VIII 

The day after the wedding. 

It was Sunday. Because it was to be Sunday they 
had made plans for that day, plans implying that Marty 
was to be back at work on Monday morning. Jo Ellen’s 
vacation stretched forward as a spacious vista. Right 
there at the beginning, and belonging to both, was this 
first day that was to be wholly their own. There were a 
great number of points about the apartment that could 
not be considered correctively until they were actually 
living there. When you were actually in a place you 
could adjust it like a garment. You could snuggle 
into it and reach the state of utter comfort by experiment. 
In the afternoon they were to have sallied out, not upon 
any visit, but upon some special private adventure, 
just as they might have done if they were in a strange 
city. Marty had emphasized the fact that going forth 
in their married state would invest any imaginable 
place with a peculiar and superlative wonder. 

The day as it came was extraordinarily different. 
When it was over it had the effect of tumult, of clattering 



THE BOLT 


155 


excitement. No shred of the original picture remained; 
not a line or spot. Where there was to have been peace 
there was suspense. Where there was to have been 
privacy there was the effect of a crowd, of hearts laid 
bare to the sky. 

Doctors seemed to populate the place. Only one 
doctor was physically present—he came soon after 
nine o’clock, with his searching look and economized 
gestures of investigation. But talk turned again and 
again to doctors. It sounded on the ’phone when Jo 
Ellen began the wired confessional that brought, early 
in the day, Uncle Ben and her mother, and Marty’s 
mother and father. The reasonable inference was 
that somebody should find the real doctor who would 
do something at once. Mrs. Simms gave the impression 
of being astounded that Jo Ellen should have picked 
up any old doctor in such a crisis. Marty’s father, 
however,' pointed out that Jo Ellen had naturally 
grabbed the first one she could find. Very likely the 
only thing that remained to be done was something 
profound. It might take time. It wasn’t like a broken 
ankle. 

“I’d like Dr. Parker to see him,” said Ben Bogert. 

Bogert looked crushed. He never ceased watching 
for the sign in Jo Ellen, as if the true meaning, the defin¬ 
itive prophecy, were to be read, somehow, in her face. 
He saw that she was fighting to keep the weight of 
this intrusion from breaking her stride, that she had 
her chin set, not hysterically, nor defiantly, but (as he 
read it) in a kind of plucky patience that stood for a thing 
or didn’t, and that could bide its time. He knew that 
he was not seeing her first mood, that she had already 
made some sort of terms with the calamity. He knew, 
too, that she was not looking so far forward as her 
elders were inclined to look, and he was glad of it. The 
young couldn’t see. ... If they could see, they would 
already be old. They wouldn’t, like Jo Ellen, be able 


156 


JO ELLEN 


to cheer up and start to put pep into the situation. 
They wouldn’t have that wavering look that Marty 
had, a w T avering between excited hope and clammy 
desperation. 

Marty wanted to sit up. He felt all right except 
for the stupid legs. But the doctor had ordered him 
to remain quiet until such time as “the family” might 
decide on the personnel of a consultation. 

“I should think an army surgeon would naturally 
come into the game,” said Bogert, standing with Marty’s 
father at the bedside. “The Lmited States is concerned 
in this. ” 

Marty looked up sharply. “I'm sick of the United 
States,” he said. “The army surgeons dismissed me. 
That was that. Besides, the surgeon who knew all 
about it was killed in a smash-up—two cars—head on, 
and then into a ditch. He was a rough brute, and he 
got his. What’s the good of going back? Let’s begin 
right here.” 

“But it didn’t begin here—it began there,” said his 
father. “The history of it makes a difference.” 

This seemed to irritate Marty. 

“The history of it’s in my back,” he said. “Some¬ 
thing or other was nearly broken. This has made it 
worse—or finished it, ” he added desperately. 

“Nonsense, ” returned the father. “Finished? You’re 
young. They’ll shake you together again. Maybe an 
osteopath ...” 

There was a distressing quantity of futile speculation, 
and whatever anybody thought or said always ended 
in a look from Marty to Jo Ellen. 

Jo Ellen believed that her mother-in-law looked at 
her in a kind of fury, as if to say: If Marty hadn’t 
married a red-headed girl who lived in Inwood, and 
hadn’t ridden in a car to Nineteenth Street, and 
hadn’t leapt upstairs with a suit case, and hadn’t 
stumbled on the top steps, all would have been well 


THE BOLT 


157 


with him. It might be that nothing of this sort was in 
her mind. But her look certainly said, at the very least, 
that he had been right enough until he did get married. 

Jo Ellen’s mother was the quietest in the group. She 
spent most of her time in obscure ministrations. She 
went over the supplies in the kitchen and noted how the 
pantry shelves repeated the technic of her own. There 
was a time when she thought Jo Ellen would never 
make a housekeeper. Afterward it appeared that Jo 
Ellen wasn’t incapable of housekeeping. She only 
disliked it, which was a different matter. If things 
came to the worst she would have to be both nurse and 
housekeeper for a little while—until something could be 
done. It would be a dreadful plunge. By way of a 
honeymoon it would be grotesque. A honeymoon. 
Mrs. Rewer’s face grew hot in a humiliated indignation. 
Perhaps in her way she was as indignant as Mrs. Simms, 
but there was no real parallel. She was not indignant 
at Marty. Her resentment was against circumstances. 
She had but one daughter. It was a pity that that 
daughter couldn’t have had the anticipated happy in¬ 
terval, whatever might come to her later on. Assuming 
that a honeymoon was delusive, it was a delusion the 
two adventurers were entitled to. If a dream interval 
weren’t part of the bargain, who would want to make 
the bargain at all? Of course, there were horrible honey¬ 
moons, even when no one tumbled. Every woman 
heard about them. The whole business of marriage 
was a gamble, naturally. But there were times when 
you could see a little way along the road with perfect 
certainty, or thought you could. Without special disaster 
Marty and Jo Ellen would have made a good start. 
They were friends to begin with, and you couldn’t 
begin with anything better than friendship. Jo Ellen 
was the sort that played the game. She would play 
the game now, whatever it was to be. What was it to 
be? It might be a trial to the mother of the bride. . . . 


158 


JO ELLEN 


Grandmother Bogert came in the afternoon. 

“I knew you were going to have enough of them in 
the morning,” she said. “Thought I’d look in after 
you had figured out the worst. Perhaps I never told 
you that both your grandfather and I were battered 
up in a buggy ride on our wedding trip. You know, 
nobody’s supposed to have any real sense on a honey¬ 
moon, and operating without sense sort of stacks the 
cards against you anyway. Plow’s the bridegroom 
feeling?” 

Bravado for Grandmother Bogert. And she may have 
been misled by the bravado of Jo Ellen. When she had 
talked with Marty she was a bit quieted. She, too, made 
more than one appraisement of Jo Ellen. But she was 
not to be permanently subdued. 

“Well, boy,” she said to Marty, “I’m not fool enough 
to tell you to remember that you have been a soldier 
and that this is your cross. None of that rot from 
mamma. If I had been in your boots and this had 
happened to me, I wouldn’t thank anybody to yap 
around me on the subject of war. I’d heave some¬ 
thing at anybody who sniveled on that key. Better 
forget that and get down to this.” 

“ Sure thing, ” said Marty. 

“Better consider what’s left and begin there.” 

“There’s a good deal left,” added Marty cheerfully. 
He always felt the infection of Mrs. Bogert. 

“They didn’t smash your head and heart. And 
you’ve two good hands. I’m just taking it at the worst. 
We don’t know they won’t put you on your feet. Lord, 
I’ve seen a fellow play football who, when he was a lad, 
had been consigned to a wheel chair for keeps.” 

“Father’s going to send me a wheel chair,” said 
Marty. 

“He’s rather quick about it. How does he know 
you’re going to need a wheel chair?” 

“Even if I do pull out I may need it for a while.” 


THE BOLT 159 

The effect of this may not have caught Marty, but 
Jo Ellen saw her grandmother wince. 

“Don’t you get ready to be a—” she almost said 
“cripple,”—“an invalid. Nothing like that. You 
look to me the size of a man. Keep your courage. 
Sounds preachy, but an old woman can say what she 
likes. ” 

Jo Ellen thought that her grandmother found the 
job of being buoyant and inspirational a little harder 
than she had expected. Marty was not in pain. He 
was neither gloomy nor confident. There was no evident 
occasion for rebuke, and it seemed difficult to reach 
the right sort of commiseration. You couldn’t soothe, 
a person who looked as well as Marty did. 

Mrs. Bogert was persuaded to stay for supper. 

“It seems foolish,” she said. “You can’t be prepared 
for visitors. ” 

“But I am,” said Jo Ellen. “Uncle Ben must have 
bought out the delicatessen store. He came back with 
both arms loaded. Speaking of loaded arms, you ought 
to have seen him carrying Marty.” 

“Ben’s a horse,” said his mother. “I wouldn’t say 
he’d be much of a buyer. He isn’t safe in a delicatessen. 
Wants to buy anything that’s a bright red.” 

The supper went off very well in the matter of talk. 
Mrs. Bogert ate little, and she noticed that Jo Ellen’s 
liveliness was not accompanied by anything at all 
eager in the way of appetite. Marty was served from 
a tray. He was particularly enthusiastic about the 
bologna and potato salad. 

“After the doctors have had a chance at me to¬ 
morrow,” said Marty, “I’m not going to stay shelved 
like this. ” 

“Of course not,” said Mrs. Bogert. 

At the door and beyond, when Jo Ellen and her 
grandmother said good night, there was a mute pause 
that was very hard for both. 


160 


JO ELLEN 


With an arm around the strong, young shoulders, 
Mrs. Bogert muttered, “I can’t say it, Ellen, but you 
know, don’t you?” 

“Yes, I know.”. . . 

Marty could hear the clink of the dishes in the kitchen 
—all the little sounds that meant Jo Ellen’s housewifely 
benediction upon one day and the preparation for the 
next. Company had put an extraordinary tax on the 
elementary appointments of the new home. There 
were many unexpected derangements. 

“I’ll bet you’re tired,” said Marty when Jo Ellen 
came in sight. 

“Not a bit,” said Jo Ellen. 

“You haven’t kissed me once to-day.” 

He reached up as she bent over him. 

“No sleeping on sofas to-night!” 

“No.” 

She could hear him swallow and became aware of 
the new piteous look in his eyes. 

“Well,” he said presently, “it’s been a livelier day 
than we expected, hasn’t it?” 

“Rather.” 

“They were all mighty kind. But I’m glad . . . I’m 
glad we’re just by ourselves again. ” 

“Yes.” 

“We’ll fight it out together.” 

“Together.” 

“You’ll try not to feel that I’ve spoiled everything?” 

“You mustn’t worry about that.” 

“Like on the high place . . . Together.” 

There was a little pause. 

Then Marty added, “I’ll be glad to have that wheel 
chair. ” 

IX 

The coming of the wheel chair seemed to mark the 
place where certain hopes come to an end. 

Jo Ellen might have chosen to fix the point more 


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161 


precisely as at the moment when she saw Dr. Parker’s 
face after that half hour beside Marty, in company 
with the consulting specialist. Nothing was to be judged 
from the sleek, hard specialist. But Dr. Parker’s 
face was more barometric. Jo Ellen knew this face 
very well. She thought of it as full of kind lines. Maybe 
all the lines meant simply experience, but they were 
wired up to the heart of the man, and if you knew the 
man well enough you could read the signals. Jo Ellen 
was sure the signals said, Hopeless. 

What Dr. Parker audibly said was that Marty might 
just as well be up and about so far as he was able to 
navigate, and that he musn’t be depressed, or anything 
like that. Jo Ellen was not on any account to become 
ambitious in the matter of lifting. 

“A little help—yes. But don’t you think you can 
do things you can’t do. Probably you’re an unusually 
strong girl, though I’d say it was more energy than 
muscle. You might think you could yank him easily. 
Lots of nice nurses have made mistakes like that, and 
their backs are gone. He’ll find ways of getting himself 
around. That’ll be his business—to manage himself 
and invent ways of being independent of help. You’ll 
both be astonished to find how much of such an obstacle 
can be overcome. I could tell you remarkable instances 
—but I won’t. You and Marty have some sort of a life 
ahead of you. The team has four good arms-” 

“And only two legs,” added Jo Ellen, with a grimace 
that was meant to be whimsical. She felt the need to 
keep Dr. Parker from being gloomy—particularly to 
keep him from pretending to be cheerful. 

“And two good legs,” returned Parker, defiantly. 
“Think how much worse everything might be.” 

This became one of the sharp pains of the situation— 
listening to talk about how much worse . There would 
be years of consolation . . . 

The wheel chair brightened Marty at once. He 



162 


JO ELLEN 


steered himself into every corner of the apartment, 
accomplishing amazing maneuvers. 

“About— face!” 

And he spun around within an incredibly narrow 
margin of room. 

He sat beside Jo Ellen in the kitchen, and had theories 
about helping. He put some of these theories into 
practice, until she protested that he was in the way. 
It was a very small kitchen. 

“Think of that!” he cried at eating time. “Never 
need to have a chair set for me. Wheel up my coach, 
and there I am. The fellow who invented wheel chairs 
was all right. I’m for decorating him. But probably 
he’s dead. When were wheel chairs invented, anyway?” 

Jo Ellen noted his new habit of watching her narrowly, 
as if to supplement what she said w r ith something that 
might be seen. She wondered what he w r as thinking 
while he looked at her in this way. When his chair 
was at the window, it w as easy to fancy that he dreamed 
of an inaccessible world, or that he was trying to fit 
the w’orld and himself together in a new w r ay. It was 
possible that at the time of the original disaster, when 
he was in Europe, he had begun to do this. Any man 
who had been in hospital w r ould have counted chances. 
Beyond all that, or nearer than all that, was the matter 
of his thought about Jo Ellen. When he seemed to 
be listening with his eyes, as if to catch the wdiisper of 
the inaudible, she wondered; and a sense of this scrutiny 
made her wary. If, after she answered his questions 
and had given her assurances, there remained something 
to be watched, something that signaled from the inner¬ 
most part of herself, there had to be protection for 
whatever w r as to be withheld. Naturally, an artificial 
cheerfulness was a basic part of the protection. She 
said to herself that cheerfulness was imperative. You 
began with that. Being cheerful fitted in with the excite¬ 
ment of something that amounted to an extraordinary 


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163 


adventure. Keeping house was an adventure; keeping 
house with a stricken husband who contributed his 
share of the artificial cheerfulness—and did it so well 
that she often fancied it was mostly real—was quite 
out of the ordinary in honeymoons. When it came to 
the thoughts and feelings that were really hidden, it 
was true that excitement and depression were fearfully 
mixed. The novelty of disaster might not last very 
long; on the other hand, the thing you had endured for 
a while might not hurt so much. 

Jo Ellen did no reasoning about these things. There 
was neither time nor space for withdrawal. She was 
busy, and Marty was at her elbow. A flashing sense of 
some things left some others to come as by a slow ache. 
Chiefly she felt the restraint put upon the forward 
look. She had always liked to mount into her mental 
conning tower three steps at a time. There were moments 
now when she felt as if she were locked in a cellar. 
Fortunately, there were other moments when the sun 
seemed very gay, when even the meager city symbols 
of summer showed a kind of young levity. Maybe you 
had to be a child, or like a child, to blossom in a back 
yard. When she went out to the stores she felt as if 
she could no longer freely follow the girlhood habit of 
thinking about the other end of streets. It was worse 
to have known the sweep of Broadway, for example . . . 
to have gone forth and then to have been called back. 

x 

One day when she returned from a domestic expedition 
Marty said he had telephoned to Arnold Pearson, and 
that his regimental chum was to call that evening. 

“You ought to have asked him to supper,” said 
Jo Ellen. 

“I will next time,” said Marty. f< I wasn’t quite 
sure how you’d like it.” 

“You mean, like him?” 


164 


JO ELLEN 


“I meant the supper part—the trouble. You liked 
him , didn’t you?” 

“A lot. Can’t you get him again and ask him to 
come to supper—we’ll make it a dinner for him.” 

“Good work!” 

Marty was thrilled by the idea. His buddy to a dinner 
served by the bride! 

“I know we were going to do that some time,” he 
said. “Naturally. But everything’s so different from 
what we planned out-” 

“Everything isn't different,” said Jo Ellen. “Not 
everything. I don’t think we ought to begin believing 
that.” 

“No!” cried Marty slapping the arms of his wheel 
chair. “You said it, Jo Ellen. Not everything!” He 
looked up at her with suffused eyes. “If you’ll only 
keep on thinking it isn’t everything!” 

“It’s a bargain-” and Jo Ellen hustled away to 

her kitchen. . . . 

Arnold Pearson came at six o’clock. He was a bit 
taller than Marty. His dark hair was brushed straight 
backward. His eyes were quick, like the movements 
of his lithe body. When his face flushed, as it did when 
he shook hands with Jo Ellen, a wound scar on his 
chin stood out sharply. 

“Well, old man ... !” He rushed at Marty, seizing 
him by the shoulders. “What do you mean ... ?” 

“Rotten, eh?” 

Whatever Marty may have said over the telephone 
left something that smote Pearson harshly. Inevitably 
it left something more, that was not to be picked up 
in a moment by even the most eager eyes. Jo Ellen 
never forgot a stunned, fumbling look that marked 
Pearson for an instant. The sorry part of the look she 
could understand. There was more of it that carried 
over into his glance at her, a nervous, frightened 
glance that made her feel that the meeting of the two 




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165 


men would have been different if she were not there. 
Afterward it seemed quite reasonable to imagine a 
meeting without her in which these two cronies would 
have acted differently, with any new man-to-man 
feeling entirely free to say its say. The third one always 
brought some sort of restraint, and, of course, she was 
the most significant possible third one—the wife one, 
the new wife one. A man friend had to get used to the 
adjustment. . . . Yes, it was all quite reasonable. L'p 
to a certain point you could explain it perfectly. Beyond 
that point you went groping . . . like Pearson. 

Of course, she didn't know much about Pearson. She 
understood that wives often hated friends of their 
husbands. Pearson didn't seem to be the sort vou 
would hate. Marty had used the world “loyal” in 
speaking of him, which had the necessary sentimental 
sound. A buddy was expected to be loyal. Pearson 
had carried Marty after he was wounded. There was 
an implication of sacrifice. Marty naturally adored him. 
You could think of all this in estimating Pearson's 
stupefaction when he began to know just what had 
finally happened to Marty. No matter what Marty 
had said to him at the telephone, it would be a certain 
sort of shock to see him, to see him with Jo Ellen standing 
by. There was the effect of his feeling that the first 
hurt had happened to Martv, and that this second one, 
this one that completely toppled him, had happened to 
two. It was as if his feeling must go out to both of 
them, and as if this was hard for him. In the end he 
could only stammer, 

“Martv, old man, this is tough.” 

The sight of his friend excited Marty. 

“Don't be so solemn, Arnold,*' he said with a forced 
loudness, “it isn’t a funeral. We're going to surprise 
you. Business as usual. A get-together of us three. 
Never mind the old legs.” 

“I’m mighty glad-” 




166 


JO ELLEN 


“Of course. Glad not to find the newly-weds moping. 
Wouldn’t it be foolish?” 

“It sure would,” assented Arnold. 

Arnold turned to Jo Ellen. 

“I think it’s a great big compliment to ask me to 
come. ” 

Marty laughed. “You bet it’s a compliment. Our 
first married invitation. Why not? The best man. 
The bride insisted. ” $$ 

“The bride ought to have thought of it,” said Jo 
Ellen, “but-” 

“But there was a good deal happening, ” added Marty. 
“The whole crowd rushed at us—doctors and everything. 
We’re just sort of taking stock now. ” 

“The doctors—” Arnold wanted to ask what the 
doctors had said. 

“If you’ll excuse the bride,” said Jo Ellen, “she’ll 
get busy on the supper.” 

She could hear, from the kitchen, the two voices, 
chiefly Marty’s. Arnold’s w r as low and very earnest. 
When she came nearer, to arrange the table, Arnold 
seemed to have emerged from the stupefied stage; 
and when they were seated before Jo Ellen’s summery 
supper that w r as almost a dinner, he was so far reassured 
as to be talking comfortably. 

Jo Ellen always expected them to talk about war 
times, perhaps even to hear them going back to the 
hour when Arnold carried Marty. . . . But there was 
nothing of this. 

She suspected them of thinking that the subject 
would be disagreeable to her. 

“Very likely,” she said to Arnold, “you thought he 
was done for—when that slice of shell got him.” 

“Done—? Yes.”—Arnold nodded over his plate— 
“Yes, I thought-” 

“Don’t let’s rake that up,” muttered Marty, with a 
peremptory sound. “It sort of-” 





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167 


“Fm sorry,*’ said Jo Ellen. 

Marty reached across to pat her hand. “That’s all 
right, girlie. Don’t you mind your fussy husband. 
It’s only that I feel-” 

“I guess I’d feel the same way,” added Jo Ellen. 

“You’d be a better sport,” said Marty. “A lot 
better.” 

“I’d growl more than you do,” declared Jo Ellen. 

“No, you wouldn’t. Of course, you’d flare up some 
time or other and have it over. Anybody would. Get 
a good mad and finish it off. Say, Damn war, and be 
through. ” 

“I do say, Damn war!” cried Jo Ellen. 

Arnold, with his fork poised, looked scared. 

“Well,” said Marty, giving it a dismissing inflection, 
“we’ll all say, Damn war. That makes it unanimous. 
Here we are. Beginning again. Two legs charged up 
to profit and loss. (Arnold winced.) A fresh start. 
Jo Ellen leading.” 

“Doesn’t anybody like this salad?” asked Jo Ellen. 
“Mr. Pearson, you- ”\ 

“Lord! Don’t call him Mister.” 

“Pearson,” said Jo Ellen, “you’re not-” 

“Arnold—that’s his name here.” 

“I’ll think about it, if he acts properly about the 
salad. Perhaps the next time you come, Arnold Pearson. 
I’ll-” t' 

“That’s as good as an invitation!” exclaimed Marty. 
“You see, Arnold, you’re making a hit. ” n 

It was quite evident that Arnold relished the levity. 
When the strain under which he began his visit had 
somewhat relaxed, he let himself talk, and a relieved 
look took the place of the apprehensive expression that 
had been so marked at first. Seemingly he could be 
cautious, but he was not one of those caution specialists 
who can be wary without a strain. It might be vague 
with him as to how Marty was to play the game of being 






168 


JO ELLEN 


the wheel-chair husband. His quick admiration for 
Jo Ellen, with her unreadable readiness, and the nervous 
radiance that was thrown into sharper relief by the 
shadow on Marty, might keep him in an awed sub¬ 
jection. But the immediate naturalness of things, 
the way of going straight ahead, even if you saw that 
it was a game, took off a weight. Arnold could join in. 
He could do that and be glad that he wasn’t called upon 
to play a harder part—and might leave unsaid all the 
stuff he had been foolishly rehearsing on his way to 
the house. If the point was that a honeymoon was a 
honeymoon and that thunderbolts couldn’t spoil it, 
the simplest sort of foreground duty was to help cheer¬ 
fully in propping up the illusion. 

Arnold thought the apartment was extraordinarily 
snappy. He praised the furniture. He wore a grin 
while he paid an extravagant tribute to the table 
silver. 

“O you shut up!” shouted Marty. “You can’t taffy 
the thing you gave yourself. ” 

“But I didn’t know how good it was going to look,” 
protested Arnold. “I really didn’t.” 

Before lighting his cigarette Arnold held out the case 
to Jo Ellen. 

“No,” said Marty, “she isn’t one of these smoking 
girls. ” 

Just like a real husband, Arnold thought. 

The men sat smoking together while Jo Ellen cleared 
the table. . . . 

When Arnold had gone, Marty said, “He thinks you’re 
wonderful. ” 

“Nice of him,” said Jo Ellen. 

“And you are wonderful, aren’t you?” pursued Marty. 

“Well, if two such critics-” 

“And you do like him , don’t you?” 

“Very much.” 

Marty was entirely satisfied with the evening. 



THE BOLT 


169 


XI 

Marty’s mother began to be insistent on the subject 
of the future. Everybody!had a theory about the future. 
Marty’s mother wanted the question cleared up. 

Jo Ellen used to think that when Mrs. Simms said 
future her eyes were debating the position in which 
Jo Ellen must be nailed to it. Whatever the decision 
might be, there was an implication that the calamitous 
wife would encumber the picture. 

Marty was obstinate about leaving the future where 
it was. He tried in various ways to suggest to his 
mother that they should wait. He did not say too 
pointedly, “Leave us alone for a while,” but Jo Ellen 
could hear this in things he said. When other suggestions 
seemed to fail, he brought forward the argument that 
he might pull out of the scrape. It was all very well 
to assume that the doctors were guarded because they 
didn’t want to be discouraging. Wasn’t the real truth 
that they weren’t sure? 

For this Mrs. Simms had an answer. There was the 
matter of money. They couldn’t go on without money, 
and keeping up a separate place was an extravagance. 
She did not say “burden,” but it was clear that she 
meant burden. If Marty were at his own home the load 
of the rent would be dropped at once. Wouldn’t that 
be more sensible? And why put off something that had 
to be done? 

“But mother,” interposed Marty, “we have a plan— 
Jo Ellen’s vacation ends pretty soon—we were both 
going to keep on working, and until I’ve given myself 
a fair chance-” 

“Good heavens!” cried Mrs. Simms, “you’re not 
thinking, are you, that Jo Ellen’s salary could run you? 
Infants—you’re a pair of infants.” 

“Maybe the salary wouldn’t be enough—we might 
have to get a little help-” 




170 


JO ELLEN 


“A little help? I should say you would.” Mrs. 
Simms turned to Jo Ellen. “ How much are you getting?” 

“Forty.” 

“And you’re actually planning-” 

“I’d like to try it,” said Jo Ellen. “To see how 
near we could come to getting by.” 

“How much is your rent?” 

“Sixty-five.” 

“Well, with everything costing what it’s costing 
now, you’d be about that much behind every month. 
That’s the plain truth.” 

“I think we could do better,” urged Jo Ellen. 

“X°u don’t know how he eats,” declared Mrs. Simms. 

“Yes she does,” Marty retorted. Hasn’t she-” 

“And how would it look,” Mrs. Simms pursued 
unflinchingly, “to have you sitting here in a flat kept 
by your wife? Who’d attend to things?” 

“We’ve talked it all over-” Jo Ellen began. 

“That’s it. You’ve talked it. But you children must 
understand— somebody’s got to tell you—that you can’t 
do these things on talk.” 

“We’re going to try it,” said Marty. 

His saying this from the chair had an effect of its own. 
His mother’s look blended annoyance and caution, 
held by a thin, hard wedge of affection. Perhaps he 
had from his father a way of saving the peremptory 
to the last. After all, he was in the position of an 
invalid. You couldn’t fight him in quite the usual 
way. He would find out. The pair of them would 
find out. 

There was an evening when Marty’s father sat with 
him, smoking and talking quietly. The talk of Simms 
senior showed the influence of his wife’s attitude, but 
he pressed nothing. He listened to the pair. He suspected 
them of whistling to keep up their courage, and knew 
that he would have been sorry to find them in any 
other mood. He could see that Marty was affected by 





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171 


a sense of peculiar adventure. It was all hugely novel. 
He said to himself that while the novelty lasted it was 
foolish to attempt a mapping of the future. Any on¬ 
looker might think it was a pathetic sort of novelty, 
and that it couldn’t last very long. A man imprisoned 
at home, and his woman going out to work—it might 
be all right as a desperate necessity, if there were no 
other way, but it was crazy enough as something a couple 
of kids were insisting upon trying. Better to let them 
have their fling, such as it might be. When they were 
sick of it, they would have the luck to know where to 
turn. When he had been up against it at their age, 
there was nothing to turn to. He had to plug on. 
It had been plain hell for a time. 

Marty, his father thought, might be the first to grow 
impatient. Why not? The one who could go out had 
the better of it. Nevertheless, it was the girl who would 
settle the matter. What happened under that red 
hair of hers would really decide everything. . . . Marty’s 
father had the flicker of that red hair in the corner of his 
eye while he talked to Marty. When he spoke to Jo 
Ellen there was a little of embarrassment in his glance, 
as if facing her were facing the heart of the situation. 
Her being straight forward didn’t help, somehow. She 
might fool herself if she wanted to, but it would be 
hard for any man to put over any substitute for honesty. 
... It occurred to him that he had never noticed what 
a surprising complexion she had. Astonishingly clear. 
And that very faint pink that often showed close to 
the amber lashes. Not at all like the brick pink that 
girls smeared on . . . Marty, poor devil, had that 
luck anyway. She might have been another sort alto¬ 
gether. She might have been the sniveling kind. No, 
she wasn’t a weak sister. She was plucky, and she could 
do things. With a combination like this, you couldn’t 
say what might happen. It was just the girl who wasn’t 
a clinger who might stick, j 


172 


JO ELLEN 


Marty’s father pinched the gray bristles on his upper 
lip and lighted another black cigar . . . 

Yes. That was it. It was up to this girl. That was 
what he saw. There were some things you couldn’t 
do about this case—not now. There was a point at 
which she would blow up. First, she might only tell 
you to chase yourself. But there was a point at which she 
would blow up. And that would be a smasher for Marty. 
It would be a nasty thing all round. As it was, Marty 
didn’t seem to understand his real situation. Allowing for 
concealments, he really didn’t seem to get his own plight. 
Maybe that was fortunate. You couldn’t say to a man, 
you’re not miserable enough. So long as these two had 
a theory, let them have it. So long as Marty kept from 
going crazy and the girl from blowing up . . . 

“I was thinking,” said Marty, “that I might get 
something or other to do at home.” 

“Might be an idea,” said his father. 

“There must be a lot of things.” 

“Now that you say it,” his father remarked, “I 
believe there might be. We’ll have to think of that.” 

The suggestion interested Simms very much. But 
he said nothing further about it. He was really wondering 
just what this thing had done to his son—what might 
be left of him; whether he would have the ambition to 
wish effectively toward any possible work; whether 
in the end he would be willing to sit back. . . . There 
was talk about providing work for crippled soldiers, but 
the phrase, in itself, hurt Simms uncommonly. Of 
course, Marty was a crippled soldier. Yet he hadn’t 
come home as a cripple. It was different. The idea 
was tremendously annoying. The whole thing was a 
damnable misfortune. 

“Glad you came up, ”said Marty, when his father 
was going. “You musn’t be a stranger.” 

“You see,” said Jo Ellen cheerfully, “You’re the 
only father I’ve got.” 


THE BOLT 173 

“But you’ve got a mighty good uncle all right,” 
said Simms grimly. 

“The best ever,” Jo Ellen admitted. “But I’m not 
prejudiced against fathers.” 

Simms kissed her rather clumsily. 

XII 

After his father had gone Marty displayed to Jo 
Ellen the new trick by which he transferred himself 
from the wheel chair to the sofa. 

“Isn’t that a stunt?” he asked exultantly, and drew 
Jo Ellen to a place beside him. 

He liked to sit with his arm around Jo Ellen and talk. 
When she sprang up to busy herself in any way he would 
remark, “You always like to be doing something, don’t 
you?” 

“There’s always something to be done,” she would 
answer. 

As the significant Monday drew near he said: 

“I believe you’re anxious to get back to the office.” 

“I wouldn’t say anxious , ” returned Jo Ellen. 

“Sort of glad?” 

“To see if it can be done—if we can work it out.” 

“I don’t blame you.” 

“Of course you don’t. It’s worth trying.” 

“You’ll be bringing home the bacon.” 

“It’ll be fun.” 

“More fun than sitting home—for you I mean.” 

“But you’ve promised to be nice and patient for a 
while. ” 

He repeated her “for a while,” and was silent. 
There were a good many silent spaces. 

“The actors’ll be coming in,” he said finally. 

“All sorts of people. They use up a lot of time when 
you’re busy. Nuisances, most of them are.” 

“They won’t know you’re married?” 

“It’s none of their business.” 


174 


JO ELLEN 


Marty patted her hand. “It’s only our business. 
What would Eberly say if he knew?’’ 

“I wouldn’t care what he said. But he won’t know.” 
“Seems foolish—in a w T ay—to be hiding it.” 

“Not a bit. It doesn’t matter there. Nobody asks 
whether anybody’s married. ” 

Marty gave long consideration to this. “I suppose 
not,” he added. 


PART FIVE 


Painted Lips 

i 

W HEN the auditor said, “Morning, Miss Rewer,” 
the thing gave her a twinge. She could not be 
quite sure for a moment that he wasn’t joking. 
Miss Rewer. They would go on saying that. Why not? 
Like a stage name. Even if they knew, she might choose 
to be called Miss Rewer. As she had told Marty, 
whether anyone was married or not—married or un¬ 
married—seemed to be no one’s business, and there was 
no reason why a woman, like a man, shouldn’t refuse 
to advertise her private relationships in a public label. 
Imagine coming into the office some morning and discov¬ 
ering that a man who was “Mr.” yesterday was something 
else to-day. Why should a woman be tagged by a cir¬ 
cumstance that left a man quite free of social mark? 

For example, some people said that Eberly was 
married. Others said he wasn’t. But nobody had to 
wonder what handle to use in lifting his name. 

Yes, she was Miss Rewer. Although the thing was 
so reasonable, and so much a matter upon which there 
would be no comment, she breathed a little quicker at 
the first thought of it in the familiar surroundings of 
the office. Everything was the same but herself. It 
was what she knew that made her desk calendar look 
different, that made Forty-second Street look different, 
that even gave Aaron a curiously changed cast. Probably 
the feeling would affect her foolishly when she began 
dictation again. Very likely she would get used to it, 
stop having it at all. You become accustomed to things 

175 


176 


JO ELLEN 


. . . even to extraordinary changes in yourself, to 
thoughts that, at first, gave every little act of routine a 
kind of newness. Sometimes it was as if she were wear¬ 
ing a mask. Usually she forgot about the mask. She was 
Mrs. Simms. This didn’t matter—the name part. It was 
all that went with being Mrs. Simms that made the differ¬ 
ence. Everybody, she fancied, carried around something 
of the same sort, something that others weren’t to know. 

On the other hand, concealments were a little hard 
to imagine on the White Way. In this region relation¬ 
ships seemed to stare. There was the Eberly sort, 
about which you knew nothing, but you might easily 
gather the impression that when temperament was 
happy its happiness wasn’t complete until everybody 
knew about it. And when it was wretched it was quite 
as insistent. Early in the day of Jo Ellen’s return 
Mrs. Pinney, without suspecting its new significance 
to Jo Ellen, had a story about a notorious break-up. 

“And they were married only three months ago,” 
she added. 

Eberly was momentarily expected throughout the 
whole of this first day, and many callers had to be so 
informed. Meanwhile Jo Ellen was busy typing a 
number of documents forwarded for rearrangement 
(with profuse markings) by Eberly. 

In the afternoon Cannerton thrust in his head at 
Jo Ellen’s door. He had been drinking and seemed to 
know that this would not escape Jo Ellen. 

“It is a duty,” he said to her, “to retard the formation 
of a prohibition complex. Wonderful thing, teasing 
your consciousness, spilling your tight little cautions, 
playing craps with your blind spots. Come seven, 
come eleven! Something godlike about it. Imagine 
three gods chucking the bones!—on the roof of one of 
the universes! Imagine that supernal hysteria, that 
thunder of laughter reverberating through a million 
constellations! Wow! Once in a while—once in a long 



PAINTED LIPS 177 

while—we see the fun of something. Imagine being 
a god and seeing the fun of everything /” 

He grinned, with eyes upraised. Then he came for¬ 
ward earnestly to confront Jo Ellen. 

“Yet there is a dramatic excitement about being cast 
for a gorgeously antithetical part. To be indicated, 
by a superb irony, for the character of the worm. Like 
the great Cannerton, to be, for a moment, the Early 
Worm, waiting to be splendidly devoured! What 
refined joy!—a kind of microcosmic cataclysm—pierc¬ 
ingly exquisite—the very radium of the ridiculous—’the 
ultimate white center of humor. And you couldn’t be sure 
you saw it unless you had a few drinks. Ever notice 
that? -The defiance of drink, itself a liberation-” 

“You’re taking a big chance,” suggested Jo Ellen 
with a look toward Eberly’s office. 

“Thank God! A big chance. That’s me. Something 
stupendous. Like writing a good play. But don’t 
divert me. A drink loosens the incrustations of caution 
by which all of us are overlaid. At the fourth or fifth 
drink we shake off the shell and step forth in the divine 
simplicity of self—a soul alcoholically cleansed.” 

“I don’t see how you get anything done,” said Jo 
Ellen. 

“Done? Nothing is ever done. The rapture is in 
the effort. Creation is an unfinished dream. Look 
at humanity. A rough sketch of something still awaiting 
objective coherence. Man, in his present outlines, is 
only an impulsive experiment, a flippant outline, a 
biological note not yet to be transcribed. I don’t blame 
the Creator at all. Any artist will tell you that the 
joyous sketch is more entertaining than anything he 
is ever able to make of the thing afterward. Take me. 
Why should I be finished? You, for example, adore 
me as I am-” 

“I don’t adore you as you are,” declared Jo Ellen. 

“It doesn’t matter what you say. You have to say 




178 


JO ELLEN 


that. A girl who didn’t deny would be dangerous. 
General denial is what makes her charming. Of course 
she’s dangerous anyway. Back in the days when a man 
apologized to his stenographer for saying ‘damn,’ my 
respected secretary—I had a secretary in those days— 
denied adoring me. But what did she up and do? 
Married me—when I wasn’t looking. Made the poor 
thing a lot of trouble. Her present husband-” 

“I wish you’d stop talking nonsense,” pleaded Jo 
Ellen. “I’m awfully busy. And if you had any sense 
you wouldn’t see the chief to-day.” 

“Ah! my dear! There are so many things I wouldn’t 
risk if I had any sense! And if I had any sense they 
wouldn’t marry me the way they do.” 

Cannerton seemed to be seized by a profound curiosity. 

“Why do you suppose they do marry me?” 

Jo Ellen bent over her machine. “They must like 
talk,” she said. “I should think a phonograph would 
be cheaper. ” 

Cannerton shook his head with an effect of being 
. deeply wounded. But he brightened again. 

“And yet, can’t you see the tribute? To marry a 
man for himself alone—what is there in that to be 
compared with marrying him for his art? You cheer 
me. You intoxicate me!” 

“You don’t need that,” laughed Jo Ellen. “Be good, 
and go away.” 

Nevertheless, she usually liked Cannerton. She 
liked him better than Brintell, one of the most favored 
of the actors, who never said anything either foolish 
or offensive, but whose precise clothes and stagy in¬ 
flection made her feel creepy. Brintell came in three 
times during the afternoon. 

Eberly arrived so late that no one reached him on 
that day. After a very brief greeting he read many 
letters and dictated many others. Jo Ellen had planned 
with Marty her first home-coming at six or so, with the 



PAINTED LIPS 


179 


celebrating dinner as soon thereafter as possible. It 
was seven o’clock when Eberly asked her if it would be 
convenient for her to come back at eight. 

ii 

“Of course,” said Marty, after Jo Ellen’s breathless 
explanation, “I thought you’d been hit by a car. If 
I didn’t hear from some hospital I wondered how I 
would hear. ” 

“And you were getting hungrier and hungrier.” 

“Not when I began to think-” 

“It was his first day, ” called Jo Ellen from the kitchen. 

“You must go back?” 

“By eight. He seldom does that. He seemed very 
nervous. ” 

“He’ll make you nervous—trying to eat and get 
back in an hour.” 

Marty had laid out the table things. 

“I don’t know whether I have the forks and spoons 
right,” he said. 

“We won’t worry about the art,” Jo Ellen murmured 
over the chops. “I might have called up and told you 
to put these on.” 

“That would have been a good trick—unless you 
were afraid I’d spoil ’em.” 

“Naturally he didn’t think of my going home.” 

“To a husband.” 

“A worrying husband.” 

“Guess he’s like the rest. Just thinks about himself.” 

“He thought I’d slip out to a restaurant. He has 
his own troubles.” 

“You excuse him a lot.” 

“You have to be an exeuser,” Jo Ellen said as she 
carried in the plates, “or you won’t get anywhere.” 

Marty ruminated upon the w 7 ord as he followed Jo 
Ellen’s quick movements. 

“I guess that’s so.” 



180 


JO ELLEN 


“ There!” Jo Ellen had everything ready at last. 
“And it’s only half past. I can get back in ten minutes— 
twelve, anyway.” 

“Looks good, doesn’t it?” exclaimed Marty, wheeling 
adroitly to his place. 

“It’s beating the game to have it at all,” Jo Ellen 
laughed excitedly. 

“Everything happens the way we don’t expect it.” 

There was a trace of the bitter in Marty’s tone. He 
added: “I mustn’t count on your getting back home 
to-night at a particular time. ” 

“Better not,” Jo Ellen returned. “But you can’t 
lose me. ” 

Marty repeated his gesture of reaching out to stroke 
one of her hands. “I feel,” he said, “as if I lost you 
each time you go out. ”. . . 

It was a quarter to nine before Eberly came back. 
For most of the interval Jo Ellen was alone. When she 
went to the window she felt the oddness of being idly 
alone under a glare. The whole spectacle seemed to 
mean pairing. This world was two, multiplied, an 
infinity of couples. A seething, phosphorescent stream 
of life eddied in and out of Broadway. The froth of it 
had a way of splitting up finally into couples, all sorts 
of queer couples when you came to single them out. 
You got to wondering what any man could see in a 
certain girl . . . and the other way about. You got 
to wondering as to a figure that moved alone whether 
there was the other one somewhere, and how they 
would meet. Some of them might be eager; others 
might be escaping. You never could tell. Generally 
it was the woman who was waiting somewhere. ... It 
was never likely that it would be the man. There 
were girls alone. Sometimes you w T ould see one powdering 
her nose, cocking her head before the bit of mirror 
in the midst of the turmoil. There was no one to notice, 
unless the costume were extraordinary and the lips 


PAINTED LIPS 


181 


were terrifically daubed. If you wanted to be noticed 
it was easy to have your wish. If you wanted to be 
left alone you could have that wish, too. The facilities 
for loneliness were enormous. The very expectation 
of couples sharpened the situation of the lonesome one. 

Shaffer came in with an alert casualness. 

“Boss not here yet?” he asked, knowing the answer. 
“Just the night I didn't want to hang around. A little 
party at the house. Wife’s sister and her husband on 
their honeymoon trip. Showing them the old town and 
so on. You know how honeymooners are. Giggling. 
Strangle holds and ‘dearie’ stuff. Funny. They think 
the baby’s a knockout. I know the wife’s sister wants to 
see a few snappy shows. Orville’s rather cautious about 
such things. Doesn’t want the bride to be corrupted. 
He’s a religious Elk. What kind of a show do you think 
newlyweds ought to see?” 

“Ask the bride,” said Jo Ellen. 

“O Pansy’d never tell me. Of course, it would be 
the kind she wouldn’t ask for. I’ve got to guess.” 

“Some good musical show,” Jo Ellen suggested. 

“They’ll have to have one —so’s they can come out hum¬ 
ming and holding hands. But Orville—he’ll want a play.” 

“All you’ve got to find out,” said Jo Ellen, “is w T hat 
sort of play religious Elks like.” 

“Quit your joshing,” protested Shaffer.-' “I hoped 
you’d come across with a good steer. Just imagine your¬ 
self newly married. ” 

“I can’t,” and Jo Ellen began to wonder whether 
even Shaffer might notice her color. “You would be 
better at imagining that.” 

“Me? I’m an old married man and father. Besides, 
Kitty was in the profession. We’re both hard boiled. 
You couldn’t go by us.” 

“Be safe—make it a clean play.” 

“Said like a woman of the world. You’re right. 
Something homey. I ’ll-’ ’ 



182 


JO ELLEN 


The door clicked, and Eberly hurried in. 

“Sorry,” he said to Jo Ellen. Shaffer was ignored. 

It appeared presently that he was sorry because he 
had enforced the evening return. He really wouldn’t 
need Miss Hewer until the morning. He would be going 
out in a few minutes. 

Shaffer did not feel equally dismissed. Jo Ellen 
signaled a good night to him. 

At the corner she debated between a Seventh Avenue 
street car and walking downtown. She decided to 
walk, and had just begun when she found Stan Lamar 
beside her. 

“How-?” 

It was disturbing to have him spring out of the 
pavement like this. 

“I don’t blame you,” he said with his Panama in 
his hands. “I’m not trying to be startling or tricky. 
But I had to see you. Of course I knew you’d been 
away. ” 

“Maybe you knew why,” Jo Ellen returned stiffly. 

“Yes. And what happened while you were away. 

I’d-” He was checked for a moment. Then he 

decided to say it. “I’d be congratulating you if it 
wasn’t for—for the accident. ” 

“I might as well tell you,” said Jo Ellen, flaring, 
“that it makes me furious to have you know everything. ” 

“I’m sorry. It isn’t very good luck to be making 
you furious. This wasn’t sleuthing. I didn’t sneak 
it. I heard naturally. We’re sort of related now, you 
know. ” 

Yes, this was what came to you with new relatives. 
You were served up in family gossip. Pitied or blamed 
as the crowd might feel. Especially when something 
happened, something that made you a case. You were 
like a creature in a cage, hung out on a fire escape. 
The way you performed would be discussed. And the 
wrong one would be sorry for you—you, in the cage. 


I 




PAINTED LIPS 


183 


It was sickening. If you were just a plain person you 
had to have some delicacy about your ways. If you were 
“sort of related” you could take advantage of things 
you knew, and would, evidently, think the privilege 
quite belonged to you. ^ 

Stan Lamar might have figured out that it was 
better to tell what he knew. He was the kind of person, 
she reminded herself, that would do figuring. Perhaps 
it was better that he should tell. But he was mistaken 
if he thought it was an advantage to be sort of related. 
Whatever it might mean, Jo Ellen knew that this made 
her uneasy. Maybe it meant that you had to be more 
honest. Stan Lamar was no longer a startling image of 
romance. As the crook in distress he had been a scarlet 
streak in the grayness of everything. And here he was, 
a cousinly matter, walking openly with her on Seventh 
Avenue. It was one thing to still your conscience as 
. to an unmanaged incident, to make a secret out of a 
peculiar crisis that flamed on its own account. It was 
altogether different, with mystery cut away, and every 
thing enormously changed, to be acting as if the situation 
were the same. As a cold fact, walking with him on 
Seventh Avenue was more shameless than being secretly 
excited by the meetings at Inwood. 

There was a fresh annoyance in being reminded that 
she was not really honest. Perhaps something indecent 
whispered inside of every human shell. If it wasn’t 
indecent it was something not like the rest of you—not 
at all. The rest of you had rules and could be held 
together and counted on. This was a rebel—and a 
liar. It lied to your own self. You knew it lied and would 
lie again. It naturally suggested secrecy. It was so 
used to whispering instead of speaking out that it was 
easy for it to play a whispered part, to hide and contrive 
and deceive—and make a fool of you. Yet it was a part of 
you. If it was a part of you, why did it lie? Was there 
something dishonest in the rest of you that forced it to lie? 


184 


JO ELLEN 


Perhaps, she said to herself, her mind was making a 
fuss about something that wasn’t worth it. Perhaps 
it wasn’t really complicated. When she met Stan two 
things happened: She felt excited and she felt guilty. 
If she was honest enough to admit that, why wasn’t 
she honest enough to decide, once for all, which feeling 
was right? They couldn’t both be right. If she liked 
the excitement of meeting him why couldn’t she take 
it, boldly, as to herself, instead of letting squeamish 
feelings belittle her? Why shouldn’t she walk down 
Seventh Avenue with her husband’s cousin? . . . 

There was an answer to this that came to her while 
Stan talked about things she only half heard. He was 
her husband’s cousin, but because he was the outcast 
cousin he would find a way of not really trying to go 
home with her; he would find a way of making it easy 
for her to add one more to the secret meetings. It 
angered that other part of her to know that he was 
forcing her straight into the evasion. She wouldn’t 
ask him to the house, and she wouldn’t tell Marty she 
had met him. She would be a married woman with— 
well, call it an illicit acquaintance. That was the short 
of it, and under the circumstances this was rather cow¬ 
ardly. If you had a husband you might meet on the 
srtreet it would be bad enough. But a crippled husband, 
waiting for you . . . 

At the moment the guilty feeling had the upper hand, 
and since she had had it before and it w^as a bit bedrag¬ 
gled, a special chagrin was added. 

“I guess I’m a pretty cheap coward,” she said to Stan. 

“If you are,” returned Stan, “I must have cowards 
wrong. ” 

“You have me wrong. And it isn’t your fault. I 
haven’t told you-” 

Stan laughed, and this was not fortunate for him. 
“You’ve been pretty plain. ” 

“And amusing,” she added. 



PAINTED LIPS 


185 


“Sometimes as amusing as a knife in the ribs.” 

“That’s it. Words. I do things that make me hate 
myself. Why don’t I do something that will make you 
hate me?” 

“ Why should you? ” 

“ Because I don’t like hating myself. ” 

“That’s a hard one.” He was silent for a moment. 
“If you want to know what I think, I don’t believe 
anybody really wants to be hated. What’s the good?” 

“ Suppose it was the only way to stop hating yourself? ” 

“I think you’re wrong about its being the only way.” 

“What other way is there?” 

“Well,” he said, touching her arm as a warning when 
a motor truck lumbered out of a side street, “why not 
try being—natural?” 

“If I’d been natural just then,”said Jo Ellen, “I’d 
have been run over.” 

This time his laugh did not offend. 

“I think I like to be natural,” she added. “But I 
wouldn’t like to be squashed. I suppose it’s natural to 
be a coward, too. ” 

“You’re no coward. You’re only—when you feel that 
way—being like—like In wood. 

“I see,” she retorted. “Not like Broadway. They’re 
very natural on Broadway.” 

“I mean-” 

“Q it must be great to do things—to do anything — 
without blaming yourself. ” 

“Yes,” he admitted, guardedly. He was suspicious 
of an improvised trap. “If you can do it. I 
suppose there are people . . . But I guess it gets to 
them some time or other. If I didn’t have to blame 
myself ... it would make a difference.” 

She knew he wanted to establish a confessional, to 
get something said which she had never let him reach. 
Stan prostrate had not appealed to her. He had begun 
as an upstanding figure. Any symptom of groveling 




186 


JO ELLEN 


always made her nervous. There might be a fine point 
in it somewhere. But fine points didn’t matter now. 
It didn’t pay to have your wires crossed by trying to 
think two different ways. 

“If you don’t want to blame yourself any more,” 
she said, “you’ll count me out.” 

He shook his head. “No. It can’t be done.” 

“It must. You see, I’m no longer a free, irresponsible 
person.” 

“You don’t mean, do you, that all friends are chucked? 
—that being married-” 

“You know exactly what I mean.” 

“I wish I did. I wish-” 

She looked up at him suddenly, as if she might be 
set on finding out how he looked while he wished. 

“I just don’t like secret things,” she said quietly. 
“I like to be free—as free as I can be. And secret things 
—well, they sort of chain you. You have to keep remem¬ 
bering the chains.” 

“Good God! Chains? You're chained, all right!” 

“And you pity me, of course.” 

“Wait a moment—I only wanted to say-’ ’ 

“I know. Suppose I am chained. I’ll have to buck 
up and do the best I can. I don’t want to carry anything 
more. You know how often it happens in a play that 
if somebody would say some plain thing the whole 
situation would clear up? Well, I’d like to say a plain 
thing like that. I’m telling you the truth. I’m not 
talking goody stuff. A secret gives me a twist. I’m not 
good at it. Probably there are people who can get fun out 
of hidden things. If they really do, maybe they’re lucky. 
Maybe I’m a freak. That doesn't matter. I know what 
I can’t do. I haven’t got time to be uncomfortable. ” 

“I see. You’re thinking about—about Marty.” 

“Mostly about myself. Selfishness.” 

“Conscience, eh?” Stan managed not to give the 
word a color. 






PAINTED LIPS 


187 


“If you want to call it that.” She made a little 
sound that was not quite a laugh. “ Think of a conscience 
on Seventh Avenue! Maybe it used to be a conscience 
and now it’s a contract. I’m going home to the party of 
the first part. ” 

“I’ve got a contract on my hands to-night,” said 
Stan—it was to have been part of the formula to avoid 
the question of the flat—“but it doesn’t mean breaking 
friends. Business isn’t so rough as-” 

“Good-by,” said Jo Ellen. 

They had reached Nineteenth Street. Stan turned 
with her as if in defiance. 

There was a tight silence as they walked. Jo Ellen 
wondered whether Stan had nerves. 

Suddenly she stopped short. “This is really a good- 
by, ” she said. 

“We’re near enough, are we?” he asked in a dull 
voice. He knew—they both knew—that all they had 
been thinking focused at the apartment house door. 

He took her hand. “All the same,” he began- 

She drew her hand away and turned quickly. 

in 

Marty in his wheel chair was directly in front of the 
door as she let herself into their quarters. 

His face had a look of suspended distress. 

“Who was it?” 

The question came with a curious sharpness, as if 
driven out by a seizure. 

“Who was it? You know, it looked like Stan Lamar. 
I would have taken an oath that it was-” 

“It was Stan Lamar.” 

“ The dirty crook! ” 

Curiosity faded and a convulsive, a very ugly, 
distortion took its place. 

The shock of the challenge was so poignant that Jo 
Ellen was held where she stood with her back to the 





188 


JO ELLEN 


door. Evidently Marty had been huddled at the window 
—in the dark—and would have been able to see for a 
considerable way up the street. He would not have 
been thinking of an escort. He would have tired of 
reading, and the window would have been a place of 
rumination. Shut-ins found windows a solace. If he 
had been spying he could not have been more successful 
in sighting his calamity. And she had promptly confirmed 
his suspicion. She would not have known how to do 
otherwise. But there w^as more to it. Telling him a 
whole story was another matter. It wasn’t necessary 
to tell all of it. When what might have been a single 
incident stirred him so outrageously it would be foolish 
to make things worse. He wouldn’t understand. Making 
him understand was part of her new obligation. This 
was what happened when you married. 

“I’m sorry,” was all she said at first. Such words can 
be rather acrid even when they are quite truthful. 

“How in hell—?” He seemed to be choked by his 
sudden anger. 

“You’re not accusing me, are you?” she demanded. 
Perhaps he could see some of the astonishment that 
was mixed with her sense of wrong. 

“Accuse? You?—No. Him! Damn him! That 
crook!—grabbing you-” 

“I thought maybe you w T ere blaming me,” said Jo 
Ellen with a steadiness of which she didn’t admire the 
sound. It was a kind of lie. But he had no right- 

“Don’t you see,” cried Marty, “that it’s just like 
that devil—just like everything he does? Don’t you see? 
To get hold of you— now —like a thief, a thief —then 
ducking away in regular crook style. He’d have a crook’s 
way of spotting you. And that’s what I can’t see—how 
he could manage-” 

“ He was in and out of the office. To-night I happened 
to meet him. ” 

Marty wanted particulars. She knew he was not 






PAINTED LIPS 


189 


really accusing her—that he was not conscious of doing 
that. He was fascinated by his own sudden image of 
a diabolical intrusion, of a lecherous clutch that knew 
no codes. He wanted to read into the details a con¬ 
firmation of his picture. The very phrases of the assailant 
would illuminate the characteristic methods of such 
a man. Nothing would be too trivial to be verifying. 
And to feed her husband’s conviction Jo Ellen was to 
squirm in cross-examination. 

He had no right—she said this again to herself. It 
wasn’t fair that she should be forced into nasty sub¬ 
terfuges to avoid a review. All that had gone before 
was her own affair. The new questions deepened 
her sense of outrage. To be held there like a prisoner 
in the dock. . . . She turned to put away her hat. But 
there was no end to it. 

“What did he say about me?” 

Marty’s chin had an eager angle. He was transfixed 
by a tension of curiosity. Probably he would harp on 
this for weeks. Every device she used she would have 
to use again, whenever it interested him to twist the 
barb. And what she thought and felt must be spread 
out and examined and debated in the morbidly minute 
process of his shut-in speculations. 

Her actual words were truthful, but she assured her¬ 
self that her total was not true. Marty would have no 
idea of what had happened or how it happened; he was 
too busy hating Stan Lamar to see anything. Marty 
seemed to have created the situation. It was he 
who had given a new annoyance to something that had 
already been problem enough. Stan had been dragged 
into the house. And this would, probably, turn out to 
be typical. She would have to keep on giving an account 
of herself or build up a protective barrier. The fact that 
Marty would not call it a challenge could not soften the 
effect. He would have nothing to do but want to know. 

And she could come home to the supper dishes. . . . 


190 


JO ELLEN 


From the kitchen she heard the rattle of his wheel 
chair. He would always be at her elbow demanding— 
affectionately—her appraisements of the world she saw. 
Her books must be kept balanced. If she went anywhere, 
if she met anyone, and undertook to make report, her 
reactions must match expectations. In the instance 
of any meeting, what she said to him —any him—would 
always be part of the issue. If she couldn’t be balanced 
she would have to be silent. She would have to build up 
a what-to-tell-when-you-get-home formula. 

“I wonder what’s become of that high-kicking wife 
of his?” 

This came clattering into the scene. Jo Ellen paused 
tensely in the midst of her work. 

“Wife?” 

“The girl he ran off with. A dancer. She’d been 
married to some old fellow before that. After the divorce 
Stan married her—it happened very soon. Oh, she was no¬ 
torious. A terror. Fearful drinker, when she got going.’ ’ 

“He didn’t mention his wife,” said Jo Ellen, her face 
safely averted. 

“Ah! No! He wouldn’t be mentioning wives. Of 
course not. And he’d be through with her by now.” 

“If you don’t mind, ” Jo Ellen tossed over her shoulder, 
“we’ll drop him. ” 

“Right-o. Drop him. Let him get that—when he 
comes sneaking around. You know the more I think 
of it ” 

“Marty!” Jo Ellen produced a detonation among the 
dishes. “I meant that. Please don’t go on with it!” 

“O well ... ” He shut himself off rather sullenly. 
“ I know when I get the hook. ” 

“But dropping him means dropping him. And 
you-” 

“I see. The whole thing’s made you nervous. If 
you weren’t tired or something you wouldn’t-” 

“Perhaps I am tired. There’s nothing sinful about 





PAINTED LIPS 191 

being tired. And when you’re tired you’re not good at 
being questioned and questioned as if-” 

“O look here, Jo Ellen, you’re making a row about 
nothing at all. I wasn’t finding any fault. It was this 
fellow Stan, his having the nerve-” 

He wanted to drone on w T ith explanations, with 
reminiscence, peering at Jo Ellen meanwhile as if the 
sight of her at close quarters were intensely provocative 
—as if he might under such inspiration go on chattering 
for the rest of the night. 

At last Jo Ellen swung round. 

“I wish you’d get out of the kitchen!” 

Out of his own kitchen. When he hadn’t seen her all 
day, and most of the evening. When he was explaining 
to her. 

She heard the backing of the chair, the click at the 
turns, remoter creakings and shufflings. 

Perhaps she had been brutal. But she had to push 
life away from her for a moment. Even a servant would 
have the right to putter alone ... to get things thought 
out. The kitchen w r as very little. She couldn’t move 
when he was there. She couldn’t move anywhere without 
being bumped by circumstances. The world seemed to 
to be closing in on her, blocking off her dream of wideness. 
Broadway had become little. She was being rattled 
around in a box. 

It was of no consequence that Stan was married and 
that she had not knowm it. His history could make no 
possible difference. She had said this to herself many 
times. He would have told her everything if she had let 
him. Had she really liked the mystery of him? Had 
a kind of mysterious badness been part of whatever it 
was that could take hold of her? If she had known about 
the high-kicking wife at the beginning would he have 
had the same look? Would she have had the feelings 
that had bothered her so much? Very likely if he had 
told her of the wife he would have found a way of making 




192 


JO ELLEN 


her feel sorry for him. Evidently men did that. Prob¬ 
ably the dancer made Stan feel sorry for her before they 
ran away. You had quarrels, and began being sorry for 
yourself. Then you found somebody who would sym¬ 
pathize enough ... It was all horrible. Silly at the 
start, maybe, and then messy. 

No, the wife part added no glamour to Stan. Somehow 
it seemed to bedaub him more than being called a crook. 
But it was not important. Just now it would be of no 
importance if he had a score of wives. . . . 

Meanwhile, the house ached with silence. She found 
that Marty had put himself to bed. 

IV 

In the morning Marty was disagreeably quiet. His 
remark that real summer had begun, sounded forced. 
Jo Ellen, bustling about her morning housework, con¬ 
cealed by her industry a sense of heaviness that was 
pierced by sharp twinges of remorse. If her two voices 
had had time for converse, one would have said to the 
other, “You needn’t have flared up.” And the other 
would have answered, “That’s where you’re wrong. 
I didn’t have to, but I just needed to. I’ve got to keep 
going. When it’s necessary to slam things, why, then ...” 

She was accustomed to closely detailed mental pic¬ 
tures. The one of a husband had been spilled. There 
was another one of a wife. This one always wore a 
pretty house dress and a look of patient nobility. Not 
meekness, but a kind of radiant gentleness. She never 
flared up. Her hair wasn’t red, but rather darkish, 
evidently. And you didn’t think of her so much as 
going out and mixing. If she did mix you could pick 
her out anywhere. You would know her the way you 
would know a doctor, an actor, or a store detective. 
Jo Ellen felt as if she could never be any better than an 
understudy to the real thing, because the conditions 
weren’t like those in any picture. She had to go out; 


PAINTED LIPS 


193 


and going out to work and coming back were more the 
man’s way, naturally. When the man couldn’t lead, 
everything was changed. When you couldn’t see his 
figure finding the path, your picture had to be changed, 
and you had to be changed. Probably everybody had 
to be changed a little to fit mind pictures. But the 
process had fearful difficulties. 

The morning was humid. Hot smells came through 
the windows. The heavy-heeled woman in the flat 
above started a vacuum cleaner that emitted a sound 
like the wail of the doomed. The buzzer at the dumb¬ 
waiter asked for the garbage. A ting from the house 
bell meant that the postman was dropping letters. 
Jo Ellen brought up the mail before going away. This 
became a formula. Marty would pause with his morning 
paper until she came up again or failed to come. To 
him a letter became enormously important. He could 
reread it after she was gone. 

On this morning his arms clung to her at the last. 

“We’re all right, aren’t we?” he said with the kiss. 

“Sure.” 

He had asked her to get him some razor blades; and 
she was to bring him a book she had at the office—a 
very romantic book from which they were making a play. 

It was after she had gone that it occurred to him how 
easy it might be for her to conceal the getting of a 
letter. He had a momentary sense of meanness at the 
thought, yet he elaborated the idea as one that was 
forced upon him by circumstances. He remembered 
something of the kind in a book which led him to spec¬ 
ulate for a long time over the many forms of concealment 
that might be practiced upon a stricken person. He 
was able to work out certain devices that took on the 
intricacy of melodrama. 

Uncle Ben had a theory that private telephone mes¬ 
sages did not improve a girl’s position in her office. 



194 


JO ELLEN 


There were glaring examples in his own place. So that 
he preferred writing a note to Jo Ellen suggesting (with 
a rather labored joke) that she might go to lunch with 
him; and since she was at the mercy of a man who 
didn’t always consider the clock, she might call him 
when she was ready. He named a meeting cornerjwith 
particularity. 

This first midday restaurant meal together was a 
great success. Uncle Ben preferred a place where he 
knew the waiters, especially one waiter who looked 
like a Montenegrin prince. It was a place that reached 
its noise crisis at noontime rather than in the evening. 
Uncle Ben didn’t mind the noise. He boomed his order 
cordially, and the princeish-looking waiter had a way of 
obliterating obstacles to speed. 

Uncle Ben made it plain that he suspected Jo Ellen 
of not getting enough to eat. 

“You’ll feed your man,” he said, “but with the 
office and everything you’ll get het up and won’t feed 
yourself properly. ” 

“Nonsense, ” returned Jo Ellen. “Do I look wasted?” 

“You look fine,” admitted Bogert. “But a shade 
thin. If you try to do everything, you’ll get thinner. 
It don’t do any good to wear yourself out. Of course, 
if you’d both been working you would be going out to 
dinner and all that. Now look what you’re trying to do! ” 

“Look at me—eating lunch with you and letting 
Marty scrap for himself. ” 

“Lord!” cried Bogert, “if you started hustling home 
for lunch that would finish you—clean finish you. ” 

“I may try it,” said Jo Ellen. “Marty says he’ll 
get it all ready-” 

“Don’t you do it. Leave yourself a little freedom.” 

Bogert had a significant glance to accompany this. 

“The reason I didn’t promise is that I can’t ever be 
sure when Eberly will go out or what I may have to do. ” 

“Of course. You’re going to be tied, Jo Ellen. Tied. 



PAINTED LIPS 


195 


You’ll owe it to Marty as well as your own self to keep 
from—from being pulled to pieces. Anybody might 
say it couldn’t be done—the thing you’re trying to do. 
Maybe it can’t. Then again, you may-” 

“Fool them,” suggested Jo Ellen. 

“That’s it. There’s the risk, too. And just like you 
—to think about fooling them. Don’t you give a damn 
about what anybody expects. That’s my dope. You’re 
going to be fair to Marty. But don’t you think too 
much about proving anything to other people. Get me? 
You and Marty work it out. You two. When the time 
for help comes don’t you be too—too proud. This 
isn’t your fault. ” 

“Nor his either.” 

“No. It just fell on the two of you. Well, don’t 
act as if you could mend it all.” 

“Just my share,” said Jo Ellen in a tone which 
Bogert recognized as suggesting the end of the argument. 

There was gossip from In wood. Myrtle Fleck’s 

father had had her arrested. 

“She’s a bad one,” said Bogert. “I guess there was 
nothing else to do. Staying out all night.” 

“I’m sorry for her mother,” murmured Jo Ellen 
in her distress. 

“Yes. A rotten thing to have happen.” 

“Her father doesn’t understand her at all.” 

“Understand her?” Bogert suspended attention to 
his stew. “I’d say it was awfully easy to understand 
her. About the easiest thing ever. She’s crooked— 
naturally crooked. ” 

“ She naturally likes a good time, and in a girl I sup¬ 
pose that’s being crooked. ” 

Bogert was astounded. 

“What do you mean? Is that the Broadway of it?” 

This was a mistake, and Bogert saw it at once. “That 
isn’t the way I wanted to put the thing,” he said in 
amendment. “Only you did sound-” 




m 


JO ELLEN 


44 1 tell you, uncle, I saw them make that girl the way 
she is. Her father kept her in that coop on a house¬ 
boat. She was bound to break out.” 

44 You bet she was bound to break out. I used to feel 
nervous seeing you with her. If I hadn’t thought of 
you steadying her up-” 

44 I’m glad you weren’t really afraid for me,” Jo Ellen 
said lightly. 

44 You? Gosh, no! Not you. I guess it’s too late 
for me to begin not being sure of you.” 

44 Even on Broadway?” 

44 O see here, Jo Ellen! You know how I felt about 
Broadway. I know what it is.” Bogert endeavored to 
look very old and shrewd. “I know how much you’ll 
hear and see. Everything. And you couldn’t very 
wdl help getting a different slant on things. Not for 
yourself, maybe. But when you’re sizing up somebody 
else. Aint that so? There’s just tw T o ways of it for a 
girl: straight or crooked. Broadway can’t change that.” 

“That makes me think, ” said Jo Ellen with a pretense 
of rumination, 44 about the girl before the judge for a 
theft. She admitted the stealing, but assured the 
judge that she was 4 an honest girl.’ And the judge 
let her go.” 

44 Yes,” said Bogert earnestly, 44 I heard that. And 
it only proves the importance of the honesty she was 
talking about. I tell you, when a girl like Myrtle goes 
crooked there’s nothing left. Nothing.” 

44 I’ll wait till I know about her,” Jo Ellen said with 
a resentfully mature effect. 

44 And I haven’t told you,” added Bogert, “that she’s 
been locked up in the Wayward. ” 

The Wayward! So that Myrtle was behind the high 
wall wdth the red coping, the wall that looked so horribly 
solemn at night; it went from road to road, close to the 
river on the west, and there w r as a sort of ditch running 
along beside the northern side of it. Jo Ellen wdshed her 



PAINTED LIPS 


197 


uncle hadn’t told her. There was something frightful 
about the idea of Myrtle Fleck being locked up like a 
criminal. She wasn’t a criminal, unless there was only 
one crime. She loved dancing, and her father thought 
dancing was loose, especially the promiscuous sort at 
any distance from the houseboat. A foolish ill-treatment 
was largely responsible for her failure in work she had 
taken up. She was taught to believe that she was 
depraved; and to be a liar. And now she was behind the 
high wall. . . . 

“I didn’t think,” said Bogert “about that troubling 
you.” 

“Sometimes this seems like a nasty world,” declared 
Jo Ellen. 

“But we mustn’t let it spoil our party. If I thought 
about your trouble I wouldn’t get off anything but 
cheerful stuff. You have an awful boob of an uncle, 
Jo Ellen. That’s a fact. Your grandmother would give 
me hell. What I’m going to do some Saturday after¬ 
noon is take you to a ball game. How would that be? 
They’re going to have a hot battle this year. You 
watch the Giants. I wish there was some way we could 
take Marty, poor devil. But you’ve got to get out, 
anyway. You can’t-” 

“I’ve got my job.” 

“Yes, and you’ve got to keep in shape for it. ” Bogert 
had a clumsily delivered series of arguments designed 
to show that Jo Ellen could be many kinds of person at 
the same time. Shining through all was his fanatical 
expectation that she was to emerge from devotion or 
from rebellion happily unscathed. Nothing was to do 
her any harm. 

He came back to the matter of her looking a shade 
thin, which hurt him acutely. He would have liked to 
have her tell him everything she was thinking. His 
peering curiosity had behind it a huge-fisted wish to 
soften anything that was hard. As to enemy difficulties, 



198 


JO ELLEN 


he was ready to urge or to strangle as might be necessary. 
He knew that there was a space beyond which he was 
never likely to see. This made him the more alert for 
any signs of what lay beyond, of what she might be 
feeling when she disappeared on the other side of this 
veiled space.. . Of what she felt about Marty, for 
instance. There was no way of getting at that. She 
had set those pretty teeth of hers. Telling him what 
she was going to do wasn’t telling him what she felt. 
When little girls grew up to be women that was the 
way it had to be. You had to go on guessing. . . . 

• 

VI 

The description to Marty of the lunch with Uncle 
Ben was peculiarily affected by the details of the talk. 
What had been said was, inevitably, the important part 
of the narrative. Leaving out anything became one 
more bit of shuffling, and not greatly different from not 
mentioning the lunch at all. Marty’s hungriness for 
details, his transparent measuring look, made telling 
him anything seem momentous, especially when there 
must be an omission. After a while the strategy of the 
omissions assumed an irksome prominence. To measure 
frankness seemed like being honest only when it paid, 
and to feel this was acutely depressing. Yet it was on 
Marty’s account. An enormous proportion of her 
calculation and activities had to be on Marty’s account. 
When she went to lunch with Shaffer, she had to re¬ 
member that the incident must be translated to Marty. 
Shaffer was quite all right; but Cannerton did not stand 
so well. And when it occurred to Marty to ask, “Did 
you lunch with anybody to-day?” she found that 
a concealment must imply more than a mere omission. 
Sooner or later she would be flatly lying to him. She 
could see this coming. She hated the conditions that 
were tricking her into subterfuge. She admitted to 
herself that it wasn’t merely a matter of decency; there 


PAINTED LIPS 


199 


were ways of proving that what might be told was 
determined by the one who listened. The galling 
accompaniment was in the sheer trouble of avoiding 
and inventing. A needless misery seemed to be 
attached to the whole game of being a partner. 

She had days when she resolved to walk straight 
throught the middle of life without making a single 
concession. If Marty wanted to, he could watch all 
of her wheels go round. She would refuse to see him 
wince, and would ignore his comments, or would, at 
least, set herself against being hurt by them. If she 
let herself feel forced continually to trim and shuffle, he 
would get to be unbearable. She must shake herself 
free, walk straight, and tell all intruders to go hang, 

VII 

When it came to applying the theory, there were 
complications. And things that happened—even 
simple things—often had a peculiar effect upon herself, 
quite aside from any matter of translation to Marty. 
It was as if one with a skin made raw were mingling 
in a rough crowd. Yet she told herself that she had not 
begun to be morbid, that she was cool and level as to all 
that had to be done. Perhaps she expected too much 
of the coolness. It could not seem to prevent piercing 
contacts. The office, for example, which didn’t know 
she was married, didn’t know how certain allusions 
could sting. ... Of course not. Life didn’t waste 
any time safeguarding personal raw spots. Yet all of 
these creatures must be going about with something 
that hurt. ... •% 

Eberly sent her with Mrs. Pinney to a place where 
there was a rehearsal. It was a stormy rehearsal, 
not merely by reason of a fight between two chorus 
girls, and a wrangle that was almost a fight between 
a little dancing comedian and the stage manager. There 
seemed to be an extraordinary number of accidents, 


200 


JO ELLEN 


forgotten obligations, differences of opinion, and a hurry 
that was producing a heated exhaustion. The dancing 
girls were supposed to have been driven to the limit. 
Ed Stykes had a habit of rehearsing them until there 
were one or two hospital cases. Now they were working 
with the principals, and Stykes with his two hairy 
paws in the air was roaring, “Rotten! Rotten /” He 
rushed forward as if to do violence to some offender, 
then mimicked the thing that offended him. “What 
do you think this is?” he bellowed to all assembled, 
“a Hoboken cabaret? Does anybody know what this 
is about? O God!” 

Mrs. Pinney had to wait over half an hour to see her 
man; he was one of the comedians, with whom some 
confidential arrangement was to be made. Thereafter 
Jo Ellen went alone to see Mss Farrand at the Hotel 
Chalice. 

Miss Farrand’s beautiful blonde hair was being 
treated intricately by a German woman. Two other 
women were in Miss Farrand’s room. One of these, 
a dark-eyed, deep-voiced girl, who might be old or young 
as you happened to guess, Jo Ellen remembered to have 
seen in the company of Mss Farrand on some occasion 
at the office. At the moment she paused with a cigarette, 
surveyed Jo Ellen intently, then burst out with- 

“Look at that—and not a damned bit of make-up! 
Wouldn’t it make you sick?” 

WTien Jo Ellen returned a startled glance. Mss 
Farrand’s friend added, “Excuse me, dearie. It was 
just admiration.” 

“And envy,” said Mss Farrand through a fringe of 
hair. 

“Yes, envy. Of course. You don’t mind, do you, 
dearie?” 

“Not a bit,” answered Jo Ellen. 

“O youth!”—this was murmured to the cigarette— 
“you get burned up!” 



PAINTED LIPS m 

Miss Farrand laughed. “You said that, Cora, like 
the scene in ‘Sorrento.* ” 

“That’s what I am,” cried Cora, “an echo, getting 
off old stuff over again. Like a bum actor in his third 
childhood. Lord! I wish something good would happen 
to me. ” 

“Like what?” 

“I don’t know. Anything that hasn’t happened 
before. Maybe that’s it. I’m going stale. Smoke, 
Miss Messenger-of-the-gods?” Cora held forward 
a gold case. 

“Thank you, no,” said Jo Ellen, who wondered when 
Miss Farrand was to be free. 

“Do you want us to get out?” asked Cora with a 
make-believe scorn. 

“No.” Miss Farrand shook her head, to the peril 
of the hair process. “In just a minute—isn’t that so, 
Mathilde?—I’m going to look at the thing Miss Itewer 
will show me and O. K. it. You know how Eberly is. 
A lot of funny little special documentary ornaments. 
This is supposed to be a case of being particularly 
nice with me. ” 

“Nailing you to the cross delicately.” 

“O no! As if I were Maud Adams or something. 
I think you’re feeling peevish to-day, Cora.” 

“I’m glad of one thing,” said Cora. “Nobody 
here has a grouch. It seems that everybody in my 
company is frazzled. Enough to give you the jumps. 
Did you ever play with Pallish? 

“No.” 

“Well, he thinks it’s his kidneys. Maybe it is. Sort 
of worries my nerves. Every time he leans over that 
Louis Quatorze table and gasps, ‘Have you never 
suspected my flaming passion?’ I think of his kidneys. 
You know what Mary Shaw said to us about never 
letting the other fellow in a scene get you? I can hold 
off Pallish all right. But I can’t quite forget the kidneys. 



202 


JO ELLEN 


I’d like to play opposite somebody I never saw off the 
stage, that never spoke a word to me but his lines. ” 

“But Cora,” laughed Miss Farrand, “that isn’t as 
bad as playing opposite an ex-husband. And think 
of poor Garrette slobbering over the girl who had stolen 
her man—patting her cheek and murmuring those 
lovely words when she wanted to dig her nails into 
her throat. ” 

“Wouldn’t mind that at all. That would steady me. 
It’s sympathy that gets you in wrong. Same with 
marriage. You ought to hold him off—act your part 
and keep on being yourself. Then comes in this horrible 
sympathy about something—drink, neuritis, or even 
a sick sister. Gus Hammond had a mother he used to 
pull on me. I can see now that he knew just when to 
do it. That was the beginning. He got the sympathy 
started. I might never have broken with him if I had 
—how was it Mary Shaw called it?—kept him objective. 
My dear,” and Cora turned her experienced brown 
eyes upon Jo Ellen, “if you ever marry-” 

“Can that!” cried Miss Farrand. “You needn’t 
give any cynical advice to my manager’s nice secretary. 
Don’t you listen, Miss Rewer. All this time this Cora 
person is a sentimental old thing. There! I’m ready 
to be a business woman,” and Miss Farrand gathered 
the lacy folds of her room robe. * 

“A lamb to the slaughter,” murmured Cora. 

Jo Ellen had been studying the three figures; especially 
that of Cora, because Cora was so mysteriously old 
and young. The room also interested her. She had 
seen but few hotel rooms. Perhaps this was like any 
other. It seemed bare and hard. There was a bedroom 
adjoining. Probably that was equally unlike a home 
room. The suite was simply a place in passing. Perhaps 
if you could, as Cora proposed, always keep on being 
yourself, it didn’t matter about the place. Homes held 
you to things, and if you kept on being yourself you 



PAINTED LIPS 


203 


hated to be held. Nevertheless, a picture of home was 
always in Jo Ellen’s mind; it was not the home she would 
go to at the end of the day, yet it seemed very real— 
as if it could be very real. Perhaps you never thought 
much about it until there was something wrong with 
what you had. . . . 

It was Cora who went down in the elevator with Jo 
Ellen. In the corner of the cage she looked younger 
than Jo Ellen had believed her to be. There were tears 
in her eyes, which seemed astounding. 

“You know,” she whispered, “you make me want to 
cry.” 

“But—why?” 

“O just to see you looking so young and fresh.” 

“What should I say to that?” asked Jo Ellen, as they 
emerged into the lobby. 

“Nothing at all. Let me snivel. I tell you what you 
might do if you wanted to be nice. You might go to 
lunch with me. My breakfast.” 

Jo Ellen thought she had to get back to the office, 
but her wrist watch said that Eberly would have gone 
out to eat. Cora saw her hesitate. 

“We’ll make it snappy,” Cora said. “It’ll do me 
good. And it won’t do you any harm—to go to lunch 
with an actorine, about nothing at all. I don’t want 
anything you can give me or get me, except that —your 
company. If this sounds maudlin, charge it up. Ac¬ 
tually, I don’t often do anything so sensible.” 

VIII 

They went to Gronson’s. Whatever turn the incident 
might have taken was diverted in some degree, doubtless, 
by the fact that they met Cannerton in the place, and 
that he, in his ruthless way, contrived to maintain the 
trio. £ Perhaps it was true that Cora Vance’s impulse 
had behind it no special intentions, and Cannerton may 
not have seemed discordant. If she simply wished 


£04 


JO ELLEN 


to watch Jo Ellen, Cannerton might have been a good 
enough factor. But Jo Ellen was not to be counted 
upon to perform. These two other members of the 
trio belonged to a world of which she knew only the 
echoes. When you do not speak a language you are 
more awkward with two auditors than with one. Can- 
nerton’s manner was diluted by the other presence, 
although he always gave the impression of being unin¬ 
fluenced by any external considerations whatever. 
To be sure, he had a great many manners. But in each 
of them Jo Ellen always found that his impudence had 
for her a kind of simplicity which didn’t appear so mark¬ 
edly in the company of Cora Vance. The two, 
Jo Ellen told herself, did not treat her as a child. They 
had, indeed, a funny way of assuming (or was it pre¬ 
tending?) that she “belonged.” Yet they managed 
somehow to set her apart. For one thing, Cannerton 
wondered, mildly, why she was with Cora; and Can- 
nerton’s knowing her so easily made Cora wonder in 
her way, which was quite different. On Broadway you 
knew everybody, at last. The point was, how did you 
know them? Did you know them tolerantly, grate¬ 
fully, sentimentally, savagely—there were endless shad¬ 
ings, and people tried to read them. After all, it was 
just like Inwood, except that on Broadway you never 
got the job finished. There were too many, and the 
shadings were too intricate. Besides, Jo Ellen didn’t 
really belong. She was here because she was somebody’s 
secretary, and the others, who knew everything, would 
consider whose secretary she was. More make-believe. 
At its best, Broadway was always speaking with painted 
lips. 

In the end Jo Ellen was sorry that Cannerton had 
happened. He was, as usual, amusing, even when he 
pretended, as he did just now, that he was miserable. 
But it would have been better to hear Cora talk more 
directly. Most of the talk would be about Broadway, 



PAINTED LIPS 


205 


about things that began or ended on Broadway. Jo 
Ellen was used to that, yet she came to the feeling that 
these things ranged tremendously, spreading out, 
like those diagrams on the tablecloths at the Astor 
grill, to farthest corners of the country. 

These stage people were very rough with one another, 
and at the same time full of the absurdest sentimentalisms. 

“Most actors are simply morons/’ Cora flung out 
in the midst of something. 

“Yes,” said Cannerton with a ludicrous gentleness, 
“like little children. Except ye become as one of these 
ye cannot enter the kingdom of art.” 

They had a wrangle about art; and then about beef 
stew and dressing rooms and rheumatism. 

Cora powdered her nose. 

“Speaking of women,” said Cannerton, “it’s too bad 
they’re always looking for something to suffer over. 
Funny trait when you come-” 

“Not so funny when you come to think of what men 
are, ” muttered Cora. 

“For instance, they don’t take any interest in a 
fashion unless it hurts. They’ve got to be burdened or 
annoyed. They have a passion for self-inflicted pains. 
They love to be gathered up by any morbid momentum. 
They can make even trifles an exquisite torture. Take 
the matter of cosmetics. The one color a human being 
can’t put on the face is white. This was discovered by 
clowns. Especially on the nose. A white nose is the 
supreme symbol of the comic. Yet feminine noses 
have been getting whiter and whiter. Nothing goes 
now but the corpse color. Unless a woman’s nose 
looks dead, or at least frostbitten, she feels depraved. 
There’s a lovely idea for a play. ‘White Noses.’ The 
hero, a genial, enterprising chap, would have a healthy, 
normally pinkish nose, and the girl-” 

“Is this humor?” asked Cora. 

“The girl,” persisted Cannerton, “is a timid thing 




£06 


JO ELLEN 


who hates to be noticed. So she wears a red hat. She 
is exquisitely modest, so she strips herself to the waist. ” 

Cora reached wearily for her handbag. 

“I’m off,” she said. 

“What I like,” drawled Cannerton, “is the nice way 
Miss Rewer has of disapproving of me.” 

“Nice? Why she simply has to let you rumble along. ” 

“It’s better than that—better than saying it. More 
advanced. You could learn a lot from her.” 

“I admit it. But not with you around. Thank 
you,”—Cannerton had paid the bill—“thank you for 
a delightful intrusion.” 

“He’s a dear,” said Cora as they came out of Gron- 
son’s, “for all his nonsense. And now I know you must 
get back to your office. Some time or other we’re 
going to get together—really.” 

Jo Ellen felt that she had been stupid at the table. 
Yet being silent seemed to be about the best part you 
could play, unless you were to say things you wouldn’t 
like yourself for. That was one good thing about a 
lunch. You could always be eating. 

She hadn’t thought that Cannerton, who had parted 
from them inside the restaurant on a pretext of speaking 
to a man he had seen, might catch up with her before 
she reached the office. 

x “You wouldn’t hate to please me, would you?” he 
asked, twisting his cigarette in the long white holder. 

“Not if-” 

“Not if it wasn’t inconvenient. I get you. This 
wouldn’t be inconvenient. It came into my head while 
I was—how did Cora put it?—rumbling—and seeing you 
sitting there. I wish you could find a way of not letting 
Eberly forget that Giebler thing—I don’t want to speak of 
it to him again. It’s delicate with me. Very delicate. 
You’ll know precisely how to do it. If Eberly doesn’t come 
through inside of—well, say a month, anyway—the jig’s 
up for me. And you wouldn’t like to see me smashed. ” 



PAINTED LIPS 


207 


“ I don’t see what I could do, ” said Jo Ellen. 

\ ou don’t, just at the minute. But you will. You’re 
close to the throne. At the right moment get it under 
his eye. When it’s settled you’ll have one more slave— 
and anything else you want. ” 

Jo Ellen looked at him sharply, and he made a depre¬ 
cating gesture. 

“I don’t mean that—not in any wrong way. I’m 
not so much of an idiot as I may sound. What I mean 
is, you might want to ask a little favor of me some 
time. How could I ask you to do a kindness unless— 
unless I hinted at how grateful I would be? I’m not 
really asking you to pull anything. Simply to come as 
near reminding him as you can. You’re his memory. 
Many a secretary’s a good deal of a conscience, too. 
If we let him have his own memory, let us say that 
you’re his recollection. There's a subtlety. But I'm 
not joking. If I could tell you how much this Giebler 
thing means to me-” 

“Don’t tell me,” said Jo Ellen. 

rx 

Describing to Marty an incident—or a group of 
incidents—like this was quite impossible. Merely 
sketching it left him free to cut through with some 
question that could have the effect of implying an 
intentional omission. If she tried to evade anything, 
simply because it was hard to get it all out, he looked 
as if she had sinister reasons. 

“They’re a tough lot,” he said. “They’d be tickled 
to make you like the rest of them. I can see that.” 

“You’re very wise, Marty.” 

“01 can see! I think you see it yourself. Cannerton! 
He’s the one you told me was stewed that day, and you 
thought he was funny. I can imagine the kind of a 
rounder he is. And these smoking women. Tough. 
All alike. Living around with a string of husbands. 



208 


JO ELLEN 


Painted up. You must make them uneasy. They 
won’t be satisfied until they get you like them.” 

“I hope you won’t worry. They don’t bother about 
me.” 

“This Cora what’s-her-name. What’s she after?” 

“She just seemed to feel friendly.” 

“That’s it, that’s the way they begin. Gosh, Jo Ellen! 
You’re innocent! ” 

“It’s good I’ve got a husband to watch over me.” 

Marty stiffened in his chair. “There’s the trouble. 
The damned cripple carit watch over you. You’re 
slung into that Broadway rabble-” 

“ What you’re not ready to say, but you’re coming to 
it, is that you don’t quite trust me. ” 

He glared at her angrily. 

“Who said anything about trusting? You’re slipping 
that in. Trust you! God Almighty! I got to trust you, 
haven’t I? What can 1 do? Who’s to stop you doing 
as you want to? How do I know what you do? I got 
to take what you tell me. I got to sit around here while 
you mix with the gang of them, and then be sweet 
about it.” 

“You’re not very sweet,” declared Jo Ellen, in a 
tone he recognized as dangerous. 

His face grew ugly. 

“You’re learning, all right. You’re getting their 
ways. I can see you changing. Every day. Nasty 
sarcastic tricks you learn from them. Loaded on me, 
the useless broken-down one, the poor simp who dares 
to think about—about your wifely honor!” * 

“Wifely honor” rather lightened the strain for Jo 
Ellen; it was so obviously out of a book. 

He may have seen her lips twitch. 

“Is that funny? Probably it is, to you. Those 
people all laugh at such things. Marriage and decency 
—a great big joke. That’s the way they have it. I’m 
old-fashioned. Being straight’s old-fashioned. If they 



PAINTED LIPS 


209 


knew about it they’d think this was a bully joke. The 
husband doubled up in the house. Put away safe. 
The red-headed wife-” 

Jo Ellen looked at him squarely. 

“You’re going pretty far.” 

He brought his hands down jerkily on the arms of 
the chair. “O my God!” And he began to whimper. 

x 

Marty’s contrition took various forms. When he 
tried caresses, and she drew away or abbreviated the 
contact, he believed that she was sulking. Extravagant 
praise of her cooking or of some fruit she brought him, 
often seemed to lead toward peace. Wondering when 
Jo Ellen’s mother was coming again had some advantages 
as a device. Perhaps he was most successful when he 
asked no questions and stressed some remark to the 
effect that she must be tired. She seldom admitted 
being tired. 

Marty had one grace for which she was grateful. It 
appeared that he didn’t discuss her life with his people. 
It was even probable that he hadn’t mentioned the Stan 
Lamar affair to his mother. Evidently, he was concerned 
in avoiding any criticism or interference from that 
side of the family. It was evident, too, that the question 
of the future had been debated considerably, and that 
he had been influenced to the extent of becoming less 
positive in his allusions to the established character 
of the present arrangement. It was after Arnold Pearson 
had carried him downstairs and had wheeled him as 
far as the river that Marty reverted to the advantage 
of an elevator. The elevator in his father’s building 
didn’t run all the way to the roof apartment, but the 
roof was a sort of playground in itself. Very likely 
there wasn’t any view in the world quite so fine. 

His mother’s visit on a Sunday afternoon had a flavor 
quite different from that of any earlier visit. She was 



210 


JO ELLEN 


especially pleasant with Jo Ellen—invited herself to 
supper, and helped companionably with the preparation 
and the clearing away of that meal. In the course of 
the kitchen talk she brought up the subject of the change. 

“You shouldn’t have the burden of all this on your 
shoulders,” she said. “It’s too much. You’ll wear 
yourself out, and that would be pretty bad. Downtown 
would have a lot of advantages, don’t you think? s I 
could fix up that corner room for you and Marty. ” 

She didn’t emphasize the special advantage to Marty. 
This she had doubtless laid before him—the advantage 
of not being alone during the day. 

There was no good answer to the general argument, 
even if the money question were left out altogether; 
and the money question was not to be left out. They 
couldn’t go on this way with forty dollars a week. 

Jo Ellen had not been forced to a decision. Marty’s 
obstinate determination to carry out their original plan 
had left her free to drift. When he began to show signs 
of wavering, and at last of restlessness, she had gone 
far enough to know that the roof was inevitable. Prob¬ 
ably she had misjudged Mrs. Simms. That Sunday 
visit had been a revelation. . . . 

The actual moving downtown always had the effect 
of having happened suddenly and of being accomplished 
with a sensational swiftness. On a certain evening, 
after being up very late packing the night before, you 
went over to the Sixth Avenue Elevated instead of 
taking a Seventh Avenue surface car. You got off at 
Rector Street when downtown had been pretty well 
drained of life, with the towers rising about you and 
shutting off the lowered sun from the patient spire 
of Trinity. You went all the way up in the slippery 
shaft, then mounted a flight of steps from the last 
office floor and entered a short passage that led straight 
to the Simms door. 

Arnold Pearson and Ben Bogert had helped with the 


PAINTED LIPS 


211 


moving. Arnold took the responsibility of Marty 
quite to himself. His first notion was that he should 
wheel Marty the whole way. It would be a stunt. 

“We’d get a lot of fun out of it,” he said. 

But counsel prevailed against such an adventure. 
The cab appeared as more practical. There was a story 
in the cab journey, on the evening before the day of 
the moving van. They had been bumped by a giant 
truck that utterly wrecked the cab without, it seemed, 
doing worse than astonish the two who were inside. 
Transferring Marty to another cab, in particular getting 
him free of the wrecked one, was lively material for 
narrative. 

When Jo Ellen entered her changed home Marty 
w’as sitting expectantly at a window that opened upon 
the southern sky. The rooms w T ere blazingly bright 
compared with the Nineteenth Street flat, despitejThe 
stuffy curtains and lowered shades. 

There was the luxurious smell of a prepared dinner. 
Simms senior required a good deal of steak and onions. 
These proclaimed themselves. 

“We waited the limit,” said Mrs. Simms when she 
saw Jo Ellen. “Father isn’t much on waiting for meals. ” 

“You’re just in time,” Marty announced. 

Jo Ellen scurried to the completion of any unfinished 
details at the table. 

“You might carry in those potatoes,” and Mrs. 
Simms, after a last critical jab at the steak, indicated 
with a fork the dish in the open gas oven. 

XI 

The dinner dishes being disposed of, Marty displayed 
the ingenious runway his father had called the carpenter 
to build, by which the wheel chair could slip over the 
sill and step at the main roof door. The sky was over¬ 
cast, but the panorama of the Bay and rivers swung 
awesomely. At sundown a scarlet streak over New 


212 


JO ELLEN 


Jersey cut through the purple of the sky. The parapet 
was like the bulwarks of a ship that sailed through 
misty splendors. From the north rolled the wave 
lines of Manhattan, in enormous slaty swirls, breaking 
here at the south into a surf of roofs whose spray glit¬ 
tered against the clouds, the whole fixed as in some cata¬ 
leptic crisis of a dream. The spectacle hurried Jo Ellen’s 
breath. She was embarked anew. . . . 

There were many things to be done on this first 
evening, for there was the reconciling of the furniture of 
two households—the elemental outfit of the newly¬ 
weds, and the parental accumulations with their sanc¬ 
tioned ugliness. Of mere space there was plenty, 
for the apartment seemed to have an extraordinary 
multiplication of rooms, some of them occupied only by 
barrels and left-overs. Yet placing anything appeared to 
challenge something else. Even in what had been 
Marty’s room, which was now to be his and Jo Ellen’s, 
there were delicate questions. His mother thought the 
bed already there was better than their new one. • Jo 
Ellen did not think so, but Marty had agreed with his 
mother before the time came for Jo Ellen’s opinion, 
and Jo Ellen decided to evade debate. Marty liked his 
old bureau. There was, however, room for the new 
dresser also, so that this could be reserved for Jo Ellen. 

, Before each decision Marty hovered in a flushed 
excitement, his eyes moving apprehensively from Jo 
Ellen to his mother. His mother was very sparing of 
words, but Jo Ellen found that her silence could some¬ 
times push harder than anything said. You always 
knew what she favored or didn’t favor. 

Father Simms had no opinions on furniture beyond 
the special stuffed leather chair he sat in. After finishing 
two evening papers and most of a large black cigar, 
he asked amiably whether there was anything he could 
shove around by way of experiment, remarking, at the 
same time, that one of the men would be up in the 


PAINTED LIPS 


213 


morning to make final disposition of the heavier stuff 
as the critics might elect. At nine o’clock he went off 
to a political club that often engaged the second half 
of his evening. 

“Isn’t this a great view?” cried Marty at their 
bedroom window. 

“Wonderful,” Jo Ellen admitted. 

He held her hand while they peered toward the" Bay, 
then placed an arm about her hips. Her waist was 
high from his position in the chair. 

“I’d bet big money you’re going to like it here.” 

Evidently he might be thinking mostly about the 
view. She couldn’t be sure. Meanwhile the elements 
of their first home were scattered. You might say 
that their first home was quite rubbed out. He seemed 
to be vastly impressed by the recovery of his old bureau. 
There were other texts for elation. 

“Do you know,” he said, “I’m going to restring the 
old fiddle, and have the piano tuned. ” 

He noticed that she did not respond quickly, and 
opened his lips with a questioning sign, then thought 
better of comment. He would not ask her to get the 
fiddle strings; but he should have them. 

“I’m going to help Pop with his books,” he added. 

“That’s fine,” said Jo Ellen, i There could be no doubt 
of her satisfaction. This at least had gone over big. 
He elaborated the idea of helping his father, as if to 
follow up a good impression; yet he soon discovered 
by oblique scrutiny, that she was probably not hearing 
him. 

“Guess you feel a little strange here, this first night,” 
he said. 

She turned away from the window to busy herself again. 

“Funny thing”—she spoke from the region of her 
dresser—“I was just thinking of Myrtle Fleck.” 

“Cooling off in the Wayward.” 

“Locked up like a criminal.” 


214 


JO ELLEN 


‘ Do you mean she really oughtn’t to be there?” 

“I mean I’m awfully sorry.” 

Marty grunted. It was a sound strangely suggestive 
of some sound his mother made. “She’s just a little 
tart. You’re foolish to be sorry for her. ” 

Jo Ellen turned with a frown and the touch of color 
under the eyes that usually halted him. 

“I’m sorry for anybody who’s locked up.” 

“O well”—he reached down to pull off the slippers 
from his limp feet— “they’ll probably be sorry and get 
her out.” He seemed to have a fresh thought, with 
his head bent over, and looked up quickly. “That’s 
why you’re sorry for me, isn’t it?” 

“We’re both sort of locked up.” 

“Not you!” He was holding a slipper and staring. 
“Not you. You’re free. I’m the one. You don’t 
appreciate being free. That’s what I think sometimes. 
You don’t appreciate it. Suppose your legs-” 

“I don’t think we ought to quarrel on our first night 
in this house.” Jo Ellen spoke with a desperate quiet. 

“Who’s quarreling? I’m just telling you how you 
are—that it’s me that’s locked up. ” 

“I know.” 

“Locked up. And you can get away. Get away to 
mix with a crow T d that doesn’t think of people like me— 
a crowd that’s changing you-” 

Jo Ellen caught him by the shoulder. “If you don’t 
want to change me you’d better-” 

They both heard the sound at the partly open door. 
Airs. Simms stood at the sill. 

“Are you tw r o wrangling?” 

Marty’s face took on an expression of fright. 

“Wrangling? O no! We were only—only discussing 
something. That’s all. ” 

“I see.” Mrs. Simms’s voice struck Jo Ellen as 
clammy. It trailed off as if to express apology, or as 
if it were in passing. 





PAINTED LIPS 215 

The interruption reduced Marty to dumbness. The 
look of fear was slow to fade out. 

XII 

On the following day Jo Ellen was able to leave the 
office at five o’clock, and reached the roof early enough 
to join her mother-in-law in the preparation of the 
dinner. Her assistance seemed to be taken for granted, 
and to give great satisfaction to Marty. The picture 
of wife and mother busied in the evocation of a meal 
impressed him as beautiful. It was the birthday of 
Simms senior, and the father brought forth a bottle 
of rye whisky from the house stock to which he was 
constantly making sacramental additions. Marty’s 
eyes glistened at sight of the bottle. Simms cordially 
reviewed the group as he commented on the superior 
quality of the liquor—the real imported stuff such as 
you couldn’t expect from the ordinary bootleggers. 
Simms took his own drink neat. Marty concocted a 
highball in which there was a strong infusion. Mrs. 
Simms accepted a slender allowance. When Simms 
lifted his eyebrows at Jo Ellen and made a gesture 
with the bottle, Marty interjected an assurance that 
Jo Ellen never tasted liquor. 

There was much lively talk during the early part of 
the meal. Marty became especially voluble. His 
highball vanished and the two men entered upon another 
indulgence. 

• Mrs. Simms made a remark about “you guzzlers.” 

1 “Well, it’s a birthday, isn’t it?” cried Marty. 

Toward the end of the dinner there was less talk. 
In the clearing-away period Mrs. Simms became taciturn 
again. Before he had finished his cigar in the big chair, 
the father was asleep. Marty lighted his pipe. Jo 
Ellen thought she liked the smell of a cigar. Marty’s 
pipe had a peculiarly rank emanation. The after- 
dinner period brought a meaningless suspense for Jo 


216 


JO ELLEN 


Ellen. Mrs. Simms knitted or sewed silently. At 
nine o’clock the father would wake up, as if by some 
alert interior signal, and go away to his political club. 
Marty, tired of reading after a day of it, wanted to be 
near Jo Ellen. If she picked up anything to read he had 
a question or comment. He preferred to have her sit in 
the midst of his pipe cloud and chat. What had happened ? 
It was not an interchange. It was an inquisition— 
Mrs. Simms senior sitting like a preoccupied judge with 
a sinister faculty for catching phrases. There was less 
oppression when they sat on the open roof, and could 
have the splendor of sunset. 

A night or two later Eberly kept Jo Ellen until seven. 
When she reached the roof, dinner had been cleared 
away. 

“Thought you had found other company,” said 
Mrs. Simms. 

Marty waited for Jo Ellen’s response. 

“It was just work,” said Jo Ellen. She did not feel 
particularly tired, but the delay had made her nervous. 
If there was to be anything unpleasant, she would have 
preferred not to eat. 

“I see,” remarked Mrs. Simms, moving toward the 
kitchen. 

Marty’s father spoke up. “You’re welcome, no 
matter when you come home. ” 

Mrs. Simms turned at the kitchen door. 

“That’s all very well, but you can’t keep a dinner-” 

“01 guess she’ll make out a dinner,” declared Simms. 

Marty seemed to know that it was best to remain 
quiet. 

Jo Ellen ate at the kitchen table, after Mrs. Simms 
had indicated the situation in the warming oven and 
the ice box. Nothing had occurred that was serious 
enough to destroy her appetite, but this much could 
not be said for Jo Ellen’s experience on certain later 
evenings. Meanwhile, she was not without a sense of 



PAINTED LIPS 


m 


an inflexible restraint that bound all the circumstances 
of the roof. When she recalled that first impression as 
of a ship, floating vastly, it began to seem ironic. The 
stone parapet was part of an anchored fact. You could 
see far, but you were held close. Your eye could span 
twenty miles of roofs; you could look past rivers and 
bays to the open sea and watch the ships that could 
cast off hawsers and sail forth to the ends of the earth. 
But the number of steps you could take on the cement 
of the roof was as fixed as on the floor of a cage . . . . 
Yes, it was like a cage hung in the sky. 

Nevertheless, she could have seen a way to rejoice in 
it if its life had been different. It was true that she 
escaped every day into the open; and she could imagine 
an eyrie—an attic with no view at all—to which she 
might have returned -with a glad heart. She could 
imagine conditions under which she might have found 
her worst day’s work an altogether happy adventure, 
and the carrying home of wages an exultation. They 
had talked over the matter of her wages, and the ordeal 
of that was past. Marty’s father was for refusing any 
money. His mother thought they would feel better if 
they paid something. Jo Ellen insisted that Mrs. 
Simms accept twenty dollars a week, and proposed to 
Marty that they divide the remainder between them. 
This took no account of her expenses, a fact which 
Marty was fair enough to mention, yet she held to her 
theory. The chance of any quarrel over the money she 
earned seemed to be safely dismissed. The chains 
remained. 

It became plain, in fact, that the work itself was not 
so easily justified. She came to feel that her daily 
absence represented a concession. Marty’s questions, 
especially after a feverish day, or when she had been 
made nervous by delay in getting home, always had the 
effect of implying return from an entertainment. Mrs. 
Simms often acted as if her going were a desertion and 


£18 


JO ELLEN 


her home-coming were to be watched for any sign of 
arrogance. When Jo Ellen was late, the need to apologize 
for having had to work longer gave her twinges of 
exasperation. Each new seizure became a little harder 
to control. 

Her mother-in-law’s remarks about her own work 
revealed an envy for the one who could get away. 
These remarks implied that some people could shirk 
things, could leave other people to do the dirty work. 
Nobody appreciated how much there was to be done 
about a house. As superintendent of the building, 
employing a force of women cleaners, Marty’s father 
found it easy to get help when Mrs. Simms was willing 
to accept it. The unvarying result of furnishing help 
was that Mrs. Simms said she would do things herself 
rather than have one of s those sloppy incompetents 
around. 

Jo Ellen’s place, she seemed to be told, w^as beside 
her crippled husband and her husband’s mother . . . 
shut up on a roof. All day . . . and all night. 

She looked across the parapet at the living map with 
its pale smudges of smoke and steam; at the other 
towers near at hand, the fretted line of the wharves, 
the lights on the four bridges, the boats, moving vaguely 
over the purple water ... at the sarcastic gesture of 
Liberty. She stole to the brink and rested a hot cheek 
against the coping. Far below were the queer markings 
that meant the tombstones in Trinity churchyard, 
faintly etched by the young moon. Exhausted sounds 
arose from Broadway. A hush that had a kind of color 
marked the emptiness of Wall Street. In the night a 
battlefield might breathe like this. A solemnity, im¬ 
mense and fearsome, was full of echoes that ached in the 
heart and whispered to any lonely one that the many had 
troubles of their own. Staring at infinity made you 
feel littler and more helpless. There was something to 
be said for the pinch of an alley. Maybe that was the 


PAINTED LIPS 


219 


reason people crowded together ... to escape infinity 
in the feel of one another. 

But if you were crowded it would make a difference 
who was closest. At the end of all that was called a 
day came Marty. He reminded her that he was getting 
fat. His interest in food sometimes struck her as re¬ 
pulsive. He had been rather dainty about his eating 
when he was courting her. She now saw him eat with 
a coarse avidity that was forgetful of everything 
but the food. A looseness appeared to have come into 
his lips. This changed his smile and gave his look, 
when his eyes were following her, something suggesting 
a leer. She noticed this first on the night he took the 
two drinks of liquor. There was another night when the 
effect was more marked. The realization made her 
wince when he touched her. The shrinking might have 
seemed wholly an inner sign, but he caught it. Nothing, 
apparently, could escape him. 

“ What’s the matter? ” he demanded. 

“Perhaps I’m a little nervous.” 

“Nervous? Is that it? Nervous. I thought maybe— 
I suppose a husband’s affection might get to be a nuisance. 
A nuisance. Especially if she got to thinking he was a 
pretty poor imitation. As if he-” 

“Don’t!” she cried, in the low tone she learned to 
adopt in their room. 

“Don’t touch you?” 

“Don’t invent quarrelsome things and talk as if I 
had said them.” K 

“Invent? Have I invented quarrelsome things? 
You re inventing that. I’m only saying—I can say some¬ 
thing, can’t I? If it worries you to be petted, it isn’t 
so I can’t speak, is it? My Lord! If a man can’t— 
plenty of other men seem to be able to talk to you.” 

Jo Ellen clenched her hands as the anger burned in 
her. Married people sometimes struck each other. 
It would be when such a blazing moment came, and every- 



JO ELLEN 


no 

thing blurred. . . . That must be horrible, when one 
who had taken an oath, before God, to love, honor, and 
cherish . . . yes, that would be horrible. Seemingly, 
it didn’t always mean the very end. It was hard to see 
how this could be, how it could possibly happen again. 
One way or the other there would be hate. To hate 
yourself would be worst of all. If both ever hated— 
ever . . . That must be the end. You couldn’t go on 
pretending. It would be a ghastly sin to go on pre¬ 
tending. Afterward, everything would be just that— 
pretending. 

“If you want me to stay here,” she said jerkily, 
“you’ll have to think a little about your talk.” 

“That’s a threat. A threat!” 

Then he threw his arms about her. 

“O Jo Ellen!” 

XIII 

Jo Ellen let it be known that she had chosen a Sunday 
to visit Inwood. It should have been a simple matter 
to communicate this intention. Nothing could be more 
reasonable than a visit to her mother. Yet it seemed 
to cost a good deal to get the thing out. Marty’s lips 
suddenly became looser. 

Airs. Simms 'was mute, but her thought seemed to 
stare like words chalked upon a dark wall. For the only 
day in the week when Jo Ellen could have her husband 
or be of any use around the house, she was choosing 
to be off to her own people—flaunting her privilege of 
shedding things, strutting freely where others were 
tied to a chair or to a kitchen range. 

When Sunday morning came, T; Simms senior, his 
stockingless feet covered by canvas slippers, smoking 
profoundly in the midst of a Sunday edition, paused to 
say, “Good idea. Give them my respects. Wish you’d 
ask Bogert why he never comes down. ” 

But no single sop of sympathy could muffle the clank 
of the chain. Her going was made to seem, at the last, 


PAINTED LIPS 


m 


like an affront. A sense of what lay behind her dragged 
through the miles and stained the brightness of the 
day. Yet it was necessary to pretend. There were 
searching eyes at In wood. Being pitied would be a 
finisher. 

Uncle Ben loomed on the top step in a posture that 
suggested awaiting an event. He was in the front row 
of everything that happened, cumbrously cheerful, 
ready to blow encouragingly upon every flame of fun, 
roaring over his own jokes, fearful of pauses. There 
must be nothing disagreeable; this was fixed in his mind. 
His pleasantry about the prodigal daughter and the 
fatted chicken expressed his theory of an occasion. 
He even wished that the old baseball team might get 
out in the afternoon. A zippy game by the Inwood 
Giants would sort of tone things up. 

Mrs. Rewer repressed a desire to know how Marty’s 
mother was behaving. She sought to read an answer 
in the looks of Jo Ellen. Having read a make-believe, 
it was hard to retaliate without something spoken to go 
on. The make-believe might mean either Marty or 
his mother. It might mean both. It might mean 
hunger for a real home. Whatever it meant, she found 
the blight a bitter thing to see. 

The grandmother refused all conspiracies. 

“ What’s the use of bluffing? ” was her challenge. “ Why 
don’t you swear, Ellen, and have it out? A good damn 
or two.” 

This stirred a laugh in Jo Ellen. 

“I don’t mean,” said Mrs. Bogert, with her energetic 
finger gesture in the gray hair, “that you ought to whine. 
Of course not. But you’ve been up against it hard. 
If you haven’t smashed anything or anybody it’ll mean 
you have a good deal on your chest. Hell them and be 
done with it. ” 

“It’s just a job,” Jo Ellen remarked from the porch 
chair. “And I didn’t bring it with me.” 


222 


JO ELLEN 


“Good work!” Bogert strained the pockets of his 
trousers. “She’s a sport. Wants a change.” 

Mrs. Bogert was not diverted. “Wants a chance to 
blow off. That’s what she needs. I know when people 
are natural. This business of being sweet in adversity 
puts a crimp in you. Patience, yes. But we got to keep 
things said up. You can say it here, and get a little help.” 

“All right,” said Jo Ellen. “When I must explode 
1*11 try to do it here.” 

Mrs. Bogert was halted. “Sometimes she’s a Bogert 
and sometimes a Rewer. Maybe generally a Bogert 
trying to be a Rewer, and that’s some strain. ” 

“Oh, I’m not trying to be meek,” expostulated Jo 
Ellen, “if you mean something like that. I tell you, 
it’s my job. There’s no way out. What’s the good 
of peeving? And that isn’t it, either. If I begin dis¬ 
cussing, there’ll be real trouble. I can seem to stand 
things if I shut up. ” 

“You talk like an old woman,” said Mrs. Bogert, 
“and I want you to be an honest-to-God girl.” 

“I know!” cried Bogert, “you want her to be red¬ 
headed, and she-” 

Mrs. Bogert grunted sharply. “I don’t Tvant her to 
get her wires crossed. This Simms crowd has a strangle 
hold on her-” 

Jo Ellen laughed again. Her mother winced at the 
sound. 

“You’re a dear old bimch. You wanted me to have 
something nice and soft and happy. And I didn’t 
strike it. There was a war, and I hated it and didn’t 
do much. This is my share.” 

“Damn it!” Bogert burst forth, forgetting his good 
resolutions, “Mrs. Simms doesn’t belong to your share. 
I’ll say that. ” 

Mrs. Rewer lifted her hands deprecatingly. 

“Well,” said Jo Ellen, “she’s a kind of a beast. But 
she belongs. That can’t be changed.” 



PAINTED LIPS 


223 


“You can be changed,” Mrs. Bogert declared. “You 
can be squeezed until there’s only a rag of you left. 
Holding in and thinking about your duty. A fine old- 
fashioned idea that’s killed a lot of women, bled them 
white, then finished them off. Of course, you might be 
blubbering, and we might be stroking you and pleading 
with you to be noble. That’s one way to wither women. 
It just happens that I know other symptoms. I’m 
not telling you to shirk anything. I’m telling you to 
kick at kicking time, no matter whose shins get hurt. 
You’ll last longer. ” 

Jo Ellen stood up with a menacing suddenness/' 

“This is funny. You’d think they beat me every 
morning before breakfast. ” 

Mrs. Rewer had been watching. 

“It might be a good idea,” she said, “to let Jo Ellen 
alone, or we’ll make her glad to get back to her jail.” 

Ben Bogert slapped his knee, and his mother, of a 
sudden, was out of her chair and had Jo Ellen in a 
firm grip. Bogert gulped when he saw that the three 
women were crying. 

“Say! ...” He left his ejaculation in the air. 
The spectacle was too much for him. He stared in 
a tortured awe at the tears of all the people in the world 
who mattered most. It was as if Woman wept. 

Then he saw Jo Ellen break loose and begin the descent 
of his long flight of steps. This amazing turn completed 
his dismay. He made a leaping motion, then checked 
himself when he became aware that Emma Traub was 
standing at the foot of the lower flight. Well, this was 
as good a way as any to break up the game. Emma 
Traub would answer the purpose very well, if breaking up 
the game was what Jo Ellen had in mind. 

XIV 

“Thought I saw you,” said Emma. 

Jo Ellen knew that the truth went further. Emma’s 


224 


JO ELLEN 


((• 


a 


passing was not likely to have been a matter of chance. 
She always knew about things. Old Lot Mallin repre¬ 
sented gossip. Emma represented secrets. To Jo Ellen 
the mystery of her seemed to survive all intervals and 
to have its old creepy fascination. She inevitably sug¬ 
gested whispers. 

“How’s your father?” Jo Ellen asked, with a feeling 
of forcing herself into another scene. 

“Slipping. I give him about six months now. After 
that I’ll sell the house. You’ve had trouble yourself.” 

“Yes.” 

You’ve had a raw deal for a honeymoon.” 

If you don’t mind, we won’t talk about it.” 

“I see. It’s as bad as that.” 

“I didn’t come up here to—” One had to be plain 
with Emma. 

“Yes, but it’s no sin to be sorry. You’re just like 
you used to be—quick. And that’s what makes it 
worse . . . a girl like you, and then, bing-o, no husband.” 

“I have a husband,” retorted Jo Ellen. 

Emma eyed her with a curious, boring look. There 
was always something passionate in her curiosities. 

“A husband.” Emma repeated the words as if she 
were measuring them against what she saw’. In any 
other imaginable person the transparent process would 
have been profoundly insulting. Jo Ellen endured 
the ordeal because she had a curiosity of her own. 
Probably this curiosity was behind the impulse that had 
carried her down the steps. She wanted the Emma 
Taub version of Myrtle Fleck. 

“I knew a case like yours,” said Emma, intently. 
“The girl ...” 

This w r as w r hat happened to you. You became “a 
case.” People thought of you that way . . . All sorts 
of people. . . . Wondering, prying, gaping at the 
windows of you, until you felt like shuttering all the 
windows of you, so that no one could see in . . . No one. 


• • • 



PAINTED LIPS 


225 


“ . . . and off she goes. Had to. No one held on 
to her. A good girl, too. If she hadn't been a good 
girl she'd have known how to trick it out. But the boob 
of a man—a man’s always thinking about himself. 
Himself. What did he care? When I heard about you 
I said to myself, who’s going to hold Jo Ellen Rewer? 
Not Marty Simms. Unless somebody holds her, I 
says, she’ll be over the wall, like Myrtle Fleck, and hell 
to pay. ” 

“Myrtle Fleck?” Jo Ellen felt eyes behind her, and 
her glance up the road operated as a suggestion to 
Emma. They moved along the path, sauntering closely. 

“She got away,” said Emma. 

The story was ready. It was clear that Emma had 
wanted to tell it. At the end was something that had 
not been planned. Jo Ellen was sure of that. The 
beginning had all the effect of a narrative eagerly resumed 
after an interruption. It was of the night Emma was 
coming up the lower road from the ferry region, in 
the first of the dark—along about nine. When she came 
to the Wayward she didn’t think of Myrtle. Not this 
time. She was thinking about her father; whether 
he would die quickly, when his time came, or make a 
lot of trouble, so that she’d have to quit her work for 
McAuley until he was through. She was thinking 
of the night when he flung her out of the house, and of 
the finger marks on her neck. This was a year before 
her mother died. 

“I wasn’t any older than you,” said Emma, 
significantly. 

Then came the little swish and thud in the dark, 
and there was Myrtle, crouched against the high wall. 
Could you beat that? Escaping. Out of the Wayward. 
By all accounts nobody had been able to do that for 
a long time. “And there I was thinking about the 
night I was chucked out.” This seemed to Emma to 
have a mighty meaning, a meaning that took hold 


226 


JO ELLEN 


of you. She often thought about the night she was 
chucked out, but—well, there was Myrtle, scuttling like 
some common cat right into a neighbor’s arms, you 
might say, and pretty well scared while she was doing 
it. Trembling. She knew Emma Traub before Emma 
Traub knew her, and it was funny to see her swinging, 
ready to run, and wanting to know just whether Emma 
was for her or against her—whether she would tell. 

“ ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ I says. T 
don’t care,’ she says. ‘I’m out.’ I took hold of her. 
‘What do you think you’re going to do?’ she says. ‘I’m 
fool enough to hide you,’ I says. And I took her along. 
Slipped her in. Knew the old man would be asleep. I 
wanted to talk to her. Like a fool. You always think 
you can talk to them. It was risky. ” Emma turned for 
an instant toward Jo Ellen. “Getting a crook a drink 
of water was nothing to it. And we sat there in the dark. 
I talked to her ... in the dark. What I thought was, 
somebody ought to be able to stop her. ” 

“Her father might have stopped her, if he’d been the 
right kind. ” 

“Her father. Yes. Or a mother either. I ain’t 
sure. Maybe nothing can stop her. I couldn’t see 
that I made a dent in her. D’you see?—she wanted 
to laugh because she was out. As if there was nobody to 
get her. As if she could run down town ... I got her 
crying, though, before she went at two in the morning. 
I had to.” 

“But-” 

“ I had to. To frighten her. ” 

Jo Ellen saw the fanatic look that was always puzzling. 
A queer one, Emma was, with her straight hair and her 
pale hard eyes. Perhaps she would be altogether 
crazy some day. 

“Look here!” Emma stopped abruptly and dug one 
heel into the ground. “How do I know what they’ll 
do with you downtown—you, the way you’re fixed now. ’* 



PAINTED LIPS 


m 


“Is this all about me?” Jo Ellen asked. 

Emma ignored the resentful inflection. “I got her 
crying. I told her what I went through. D’you get 
me? What I went through, down the line. Everything. 
What it does. You didn’t know what bulls and dicks 
were. You wouldn’t, naturally. Like any decent girl. 
Wondering. Well, I know them—see?—the way you 
get to know them if you stop being decent.’’ 

Emma’s funny lips twisted savagely, and Jo Ellen 
felt suddenly cold. 

“I got mine,” Emma went on. “I began flinging 
around like Myrtle. As if I could look out for myself. 
When Pop chucked me . . . When you’re kicked out 
you don’t care. See? When you’re a girl. Jo Ellen 
Hewer thinks she’s different. And she ain’t kicked out. 
But she’s up against it, anyhow. She may want to take 
a fling ... A little one. Down there with the crowd. 
I know that beat.” 

The blood came back into Jo Ellen’s face. 

“Lord!” she cried, “you’re not really warning me, 
are you?” 

“I’m telling you. Right now—with your people 
sitting over there—because it’s in my head to tell it 
* to you.” 

“Drop it off your mind,” Jo Ellen retorted. “Drop 
it clean off. I’m a very busy married woman. I haven’t 
got time to run wild. You talk-” 

“You don’t need time to be dug out.” 

“Who’s going to dig me out?” 

“That Lamar might know how. I been thinking 
maybe he has. I looked him over. ‘He'll never stop,’ 
I says-” 

“Emma, do you think about nothing else but things 
like this?” 

“0 1 think! Suppose you’d seen the girl you had 
watched grow, dropping off the wall, like a common 







JO ELLEN 


“But me. Fm not a common cat. Why must I be 
lectured?” 

“You got very red hair,” said Emma. “And you 
ain’t really got a husband.” 

Diagramed in a sentence—very red hair and no real 
husband. Jo Ellen might have seen it like a chart as 
Emma Traub held it up—Emma Traub, who had been 
“down the line” and quivered with suspicions, who had 
some insane image of a Moloch that swallowed girls. 
Whichever way you turned there was somebody dangling 
a warning. It was a staggering joke that gave you a 
sick feeling at last. Her mother had said “jail.” Evi¬ 
dently there was no wall she could climb over like 
Myrtle Fleck. She wanted to scream, to take Emma 
Traub by her skinny arms and rattle the bones of her. 
She wanted to go back to the porch and tell everybody 
that at the first symptom of either pity or advice she 
would kick the glass out of a few windows. . . . And 
what made her neck hot was knowing that she wouldn’t 
do anything at all . . . unless she smashed everything. 

If Emma Traub had stared after her for a month she 
never could have arrived at an understanding of what 
was going on under that red hair she talked about. Very 
likely Emma would be feeling as she felt about Myrtle 
Fleck, that she hadn’t made a dent; that Jo Ellen’s 
curt turning away meant nothing very different from 
the shallow effusiveness of the other one; that the 
Moloch could afford to hover. 

Danger. Of course, everybody was in danger. 
Anybody could act like a fool. Life was always setting 
out an assortment of ways. Of course, too, everybody 
must have an exploding point. You went on and on 
without exploding. You said you wouldn't explode. 
It helped you if you planned that you wouldn’t. It 
was like promising yourself that you wouldn’t scream. 
But there would always be something that you couldn’t 
stand. If you were strapped into a torture machine 



PAINTED LIPS 


229 

there would be the last thing, happening slowly or 
surprising you, that would do the business . . . the 
last thing that would make you give up, that would make 
you shriek out to Circumstances, “You unnl ” 

If you let Circumstances win—well, then you would 
look like Emma Traub, for instance, and be full of 
slanting suspicions and philosophies, and idiotic worries 
about girls. . „ . 

Billy. Here was Billy, scouting to see what you 
were up to. And back on the porch the conspiracy 
to let you alone was so beautifully completed that 
you could see it shining like a newly scrubbed stove. 

xv 

Because it was Sunday night Mrs. Simms was not 
sewing. For the same reason Simms senior varied his 
formula and made no nine o’clock exit. The three 
seemed to have finished every function and indulgence 
possible to the day save that of hearing Jo Ellen tell 
about In wood. And by the time she reached the roof, 
telling about Inwood, was, of all conceivable things, 
the one that came hardest. Jo Ellen herself appeared 
to be measured in every comment. Mrs. Simms’s 
face said: “We’ll see how she puts it!” 

It was Marty who asked, “Did you hear anything 
more about Myrtle Fleck?” 

Mrs. Simms listened with pinched lips. 

“I’m sorry for that girl,” said Daniel Simms. 

“You needn’t be,” dripped the icy voice of Mrs. 
Simms. “She’s a natural strumpet.” 

“If she is,” Jo Ellen appealed, “shouldn’t we be 

? »> '■*** • < ^ t \ ^ 

*; V v 

Mrs. Simms twitched. “I say, save your sympathy 
for people you can do something with. ” 

“ She’s a tart, all right, ” said Marty. 

“Her father—” Jo Ellen began, then pushed the sub¬ 
ject from her. 


230 


JO ELLEN 


“Yes,” Mrs. Simms nodded. “That lets them out, 
when you can blame the parents. I’ll bet your folks 
don’t defend her.” 

“Let’s not get to comparing folks,” suggested Daniel 
Simms. 

Jo Ellen learned that you shouldered not only the 
sins of those whom you defended, but the sins for which 
you were sorry. Even Grandmother’s success in business 
needed apology. 

“I should think,” observed Mrs. Simms, “she’d 
want to rest at her age.” 

“The hustle and excitement of it makes her very 
happy,” Jo Ellen said. 

“Excitement.” Mrs. Simms pounced on the word. 
“She’ll pay for that with a smash.” 

Daniel Simms chuckled. 

“A great girl, that grandmother.” 

“You couldn’t fool her about Myrtle,” Marty re¬ 
marked with a sullen persistence. 

This had the awkwardness, when you first heard 
it, of promising to force praise or defense of one or 
the other. But Mrs. Simms found a way of doing 
neither. 

“If she hadn’t watched the brat grow up she couldn’t 
do any more than guess.” 

“/ watched her grow up-” cried Jo Ellen. 

Daniel Simms extended his hand. 

“Mother doesn’t mean to be insulting.” 

“Insulting? ” Mrs. Simms stiffened. Her eyes ascribed 
the implication to Jo Ellen. “Is it so you must step 
carefully around here?” 

If all three had been against her Jo Ellen would have 
found the situation simpler. The fairness of the easy¬ 
going elder Simms laid a hand on her irritations. 

Mrs. Simms took a deep breath. “I’m to keep my 
mouth shut. ” 

Marty, crouched forward in his chair, shifted his gaze 



PAINTED LIPS 


231 


from the mother to Jo Ellen, and, without warning, 
shrieked, as in a spasm, 

“She never acted this way till she mixed with that 
Broadway bunch! ” 

“Say! Look here-” the father began. 

Mrs. Simms turning to her son, was transfixed by 
what she saw. Her stare seemed to be reading an astound¬ 
ing and pitiful revelation, to be grasping, in an angry 
horror, as for the first time, that all she saw had been 
inflicted by the intruder. . . . 

With the bedroom door closed behind her Jo Ellen 
could hear the mutter of voices; a whining note from 
Marty cutting through the boom of his father’s protests. 
There was no longer a reservation. Marty had chosen his 
ally. 

Jo Ellen crawled into her marriage bed and turned 
her face to the wall. 

XVI 

Arnold Pearson came on Monday night and managed 
the adventure of getting Marty to the movies. Mrs. 
Simms disliked pictures but acknowledged the desir¬ 
ability of giving Marty this pleasure. Pearson, pushing 
the chair, joking with Marty, cajoling the people at the 
movie theater into permitting a favored place for the 
vehicle, so that Jo Ellen and himself might have seats 
adjoining, was in high spirits. It appeared that he had 
been promoted impressively in his business. He told 
them of the thrill and how needful it was that in some 
way he should work it off. Marty’s glance was not 
envious. It had more the raptness one would have 
expected in an adoring dog. f « 

Sometimes Jo Ellen thought that Pearson noticed 
the change in Marty. Perhaps his notice accounted 
for an accentuated effort to be cheerful, though being 
cheerful, in his big way, seemed so natural a matter. 
An understanding look that passed between the young 
men often struck Jo Ellen as expressing one of the 



232 


JO ELLEN 


legacies of a companionship. She and Marty had a 
history, too. But Marty gave her no such glance. 
There was a wistful stare that was not at all like it. . . . 
Certainly Pearson understood Marty. Jo Ellen won¬ 
dered how close he came to understanding her. Some¬ 
times when Pearson looked at her, with his eyes merry 
or simply cordial, with a kind of reaching-out friendship, 
there came a change, perhaps you would say a wincing 
change, yet one that was not like pity. . . . She couldn’t 
quite make out what it was, but it did not offend her. 
If it was not understanding it was an eagerness to 
understand, some awe of realization, or maybe simply 
a distress that could not be spoken. So many things 
were not said. There was a leaden effect in the thought 
that the proportion of unspoken things had increased, 
that she and Marty so frequently spoke as in a 
translation rather than in an original, as if their souls 
walked in permitted corridors, shut off from the larger 
spaces. 

When she could be alone on the roof, even for a little 
time, moods of the day come to their crisis. Aloneness 
could have a dimension under the sky. If she had had 
one of those days in which she felt that she could quite 
easily have managed to be secretary to three slave 
drivers, when she had felt the fascination of business 
and what it might mean to make a life of that, with 
no duty lying beyond, coming to the roof intensified 
the image. When she felt torn by the divided obliga¬ 
tion, the roof confirmed the sentence. 

Sometimes the roof suddenly revived flashed impres¬ 
sions of the day, gave a burning emphasis to feelings 
that had been shut off by the shifting of things; feelings 
that were perhaps stirred by the summer, that could 
blaze up when she saw girls in going-somewhere 
dresses, laughing expectantly, or heard certain music, 
or became aware, by a sound and sight medley, of a 
life that was not like her life—at the seaside, on pleasure 


PAINTED LIPS 


£33 


barges, in the dancing parks, in romantic mountains, 
in wood paths, in meadows spattered with color. . . . 

There was one evening that stood out because the 
day had stood out, and that held on its own account 
a kind of painful vividness. The sky had been opal¬ 
escent. A softness in the air carried a wishing warmth. 
At sundown the sky seemed full of questions, and the 
spangled lanes of the city to be waiting. The highlands 
hung out beckoning lights. Something drawn in with 
her breath kindled a clamor she could not answer. 
Astonishingly clear pictures came leaping out of past 
days, without reason or order * . . of the tall grass 
on the Hudson side when the sun was hot; of the time 
she slapped the Blakely boy for pulling open her frock; 
of the incident in the school yard when one ofj the girls 
told an extraordinary story; of the afternoon when 
Myrtle Fleck was getting ready for a swim, and shouting, 
“What a pity we can’t be natural /” had pranced naked 
for a moment in the cabin of the houseboat. . . 

Natural. That was a mocking idea inside the coping 
of a roof. And yet here, under the new stars, withdrawn 
from the scuffle, high in the languorous dark . . . with 
the right lover . . . 

XVII 

On one of the turbulent days at the office, when 
there was much of going and coming in the outer room, 
enormous complexities at the telephones, and indications 
of an irritated coolness in Eberly, Cora Vance appeared 
with Miss Farrand and found a moment in which to 
unfold the allurements of a choice little party set for 
the following Sunday night. 

“I’ve just taken a notion,” Cora said to Jo Ellen, 
“that I want you to come along. Amy Lenning has an 
amusing place. It’ll do you good.” 

“I don’t go in much for parties,” suggested Jo Ellen. 

“That’s what I’m thinking. Always plugging. 
Under the iron hand of Eberly. Grinding and sneaking 


£34 


JO ELLEN 


home. A little joy, my dear, a little joy. I don’t know 
a thing about your private vices, but I know you need 
loosening up. You’re not built for the treadmill. If 
you love work you’ve got to keep yourself in condition 
for it. A little play gives you an edge. ” 

“I can’t stay in bed all morning,” and Jo Ellen 
laughed defensively. 

“Holy Hokum! I’m not saying to make a night of it. 
It’s only a get-together. We’ll break away early.” 

“But on Sunday night-” 

“All right! Bring him along! Though I did want you 
for myself. You’ll pick me up and we’il go around 
together. Promise you’ll phone me and say you’ll 
come.” 

“I can’t promise,” said Jo Ellen, “I--” 

The Eberly buzzer sounded. 

“Rattling the handcuffs,” muttered Cora. 

In the clamor of the day thought of Cora Vance 
and the party quickly faded. Jo Ellen called up her 
indefinite images on the way home, and let them fade 
again. Such suggestions of the irresponsible, of a life 
that came and went, that lifted or put away by free 
choice, that could take “a little joy” with a light accept¬ 
ance, appraising it altogether by the immediate tang, 
came like the echoes of Broadway itself, as sights and 
sounds through which you passed or that came to 
you vaguely from the cross streets. These people had 
drudgery and emotions under the compulsion of their 
work. Beyond that they looked for the alleviating 
thing. Probably this was often to be found in something 
simple, with no glitter in it. The stage and all of its 
works had relentless iterations, and at times a noisy 
rush that blended the likeness of a boiler factory and a 
mad house. No wonder the people who made and gave 
shows wanted, somewhere, sometime, to be altogether 
themselves . . . Anybody might stumble on the same 
wish. You didn’t have to go behind footlights to be 




PAINTED LIPS 


235 


held by a part. It was a plain human wish, deep as 
your bones—the wish to get loose. When you couldn’t 
get loose, when you turned from one keeper to another, 
when you lost the feel of your very self, that thought of 
being quite loosened and unaccountable became fan¬ 
tastically fascinating. Very likely no one ever quite 
escaped. It was a dream. Yet to make believe that 
you were escaping . . . Perhaps this was the best 
most people were able to do. Even the delusion of being 
free must be worth the taste. When you were awakened, 
as by a kind of Eberly buzzer, that said you were securely 
tied after all, you might be able to believe that the dream 
was not a failure. This might mean, indeed, that 
though you had always been hungry for real things, 
and thought you hated make-believes, a dream could 
win some sort of standing. . . . 

Sunday had a dull sky. Beyond the hard rail of the 
roof all outlines wavered in a September haze. Mrs. 
Simms slept most of the afternoon. Marty huddled 
over a story. When he saw Jo Ellen with a magazine 
or a book he always asked what she was reading. It 
was difficult for him to concentrate on his own page if 
she seemed to be absorbed. He would end by shutting 
his book and remarking upon the tiresomeness of print, 
as if to suggest a pause for her. If she went on reading 
he found another question. Did the paper say it was 
going to rain? What was the idea for supper? How 
was it Arnold put it about the elevator boy? Wasn’t 
there a game of solitaire with two packs? 

Her answers were not satisfactory. 

“You’d like to be out,” he remarked finally. 

Jo Ellen put away her book and stooped to pick up 
the sheets of a newspaper. 

“I can see it,” he went on. “Too bad I can't take 
you somewhere. You’re used to excitement. ” 

“I’m glad to be quiet,” said Jo Ellen. 

“Quiet. I see. No talk. ” 


236 


JO ELLEN 


“No discussions.” 

“I’m to mind my own business. My orders. To 
say nothing.” 

Mrs. Simms had come into the living room. She 
stood near the door, unobserved, watching the two figures 
beside the large southern window, listening, with her 
acrid intentness, as to scraps of speech that were un¬ 
suspicious of her ears. Jo Ellen habitually thought of 
her as tracing a plan of judgment, a plan profound and 
merciless, with some ultimate punishment, obscurely 
terrible, perhaps to be distilled into a supremely excori¬ 
ating word. Whatever might lay beyond, she was 
intent, even when she handled a dust cloth or placed 
a dish. Her silences were like the silences of a 
turnkey. 

“There are troubles enough in the world,” said Jo 
Ellen quietly. “It seems a pity to wrangle about little 
things.” Marty darted at words—as his mother did. 

“Wrangle. You make wrangling out of a civil ques¬ 
tion. And who’s got the trouble? Look at me.” 

“I look at you, and I-” 

“Like that! You look at me. I’ll say you do. Look, 
and pull away, as if I had a disease—a disease . Just 
my arms around you . . . last night . . .” 

Simms senior made a clattering entrance. It was 
suddenly apparent that both the father and mother 
were in the room. . . . 

Supper. Daniel Simms enthusiastic about the cold 
chicken. Mrs. Simms reminding Jo Ellen that she had 
forgotten to put on the jelly. Marty stuffing himself 
and eying the resources of the table. 

“You’re all mighty quiet,” said Daniel Simms. 

“Sometimes that’s safest,” Mrs. Simms observed. 

Marty halted his fork. “Talking’s dangerous in 
this family. ” 

“What—?” The father peered at Jo Ellen, who was 
trying to master a nausea. “Better stop this nonsense. 



PAINTED LIPS 237 

You make me tired, for a fact. What’s wrong? Tell 
me that, Jo Ellen. ” 

“I guess I’m wrong,” said Jo Ellen. 

“I don’t believe it,” and Daniel Simms smote the 
table with the handle of his knife. “I don’t believe it.” 

“She’s just restless,” Marty muttered, with greasy 
lips. “It’s dull here.” 

Mrs. Simms seemed to decide that this expressed the 
idea. 

Daniel Simms saw the crimson under Jo Ellen’s 
amber lashes. “Well, I’ll be damned!” 

He glared for a moment at his plate. “If-” 

“ Save your strength, ” admonished Mrs. Simms. “You 
can’t mend anything by going back on your own son.” 

“Hell!” Simms struck the table again. “My own 
son? Yes. All right. But how about my own son’s 
wife? Hasn’t she a look-in? What does she get out of 
this ? Picked on-” 

“Are you talking to me?” Mrs. Simms demanded. 

“It’s Jo Ellen’s fault!” Marty cried out with a 
frantic gesture. “I tell you she mixes with a swift 
crowd-” 

Jo Ellen pushed back her chair and strode out to the 
telephone, the other three arrested of every movement 
while they listened to the call. 

“I’ll meet you at eight,” Jo Ellen said to Cora Vance. 

XVIII 

Amy Lenning’s place on the East Side marked one 
of those longitudinal divisions between the obviously 
respectable and the possibly temperamental that so 
often occur in the cross streets. She had a basement 
and parlor floor. The fact that she had also a front 
cellar was likely to be remarked by way of indicating 
that you ought to see it. Cora Vance had said the place 
was amusing. The adjective was beginning to lose 
definiteness. The intelligentsia could speak of an amusing 





238 


JO ELLEN 


murder. Jo Ellen concluded that “interesting” was 
worn out. Yet she soon discovered that Miss Lenning’s 
rooms were, at certain points, amusing enough, if you 
were open to amused impressions. 

Jo Ellen reached Cora Vance’s hotel in a state of 
rather bewildered numbness. Her feeling of rebellion 
was clear, but what she was to do with it, how far this 
expression of it was likely to be comfortable, remained 
uncertain. It was sufficient that this was not her job, 
and that it was neither one of two homes. There was 
no imperative need to offend either home. The im¬ 
perative thing was getting away from both. 

Cora Vance’s animation dulled the pang of the scene 
on the roof—of Marty’s sulky stare as he saw her 
going out, wearing her best gown and the tinseled 
toque. By the time they came to Miss Lenning’s door 
she began to hope there would be something to eat, 
before it was time for her to go home. She hadn’t 
tasted supper. 

The negress who opened the door—she was a great 
brown Brunhilde of a woman with a flashing grin— 
seemed to promise amiability. Miss Lenning herself 
had the manner of a mature child who happened to 
be present. Her wistful way gave the stroke of paradox 
to the statuesque robe of black and gold in which she 
swished tenuously. Her small blonde head seemed to 
emphasize and to be emphasized by the dark grace of 
Cora Vance, and Jo Ellen, watching them meet, felt 
like a peasant; which made it all the more embarrassing 
that Miss Lenning should exclaim, “You lovely thing!” 
and thrust those beautiful white fingers into her hair. 
Miss Lenning was so glad they came early, and hoped 
they would forgive the disorder of everything, since 
there had been a fall-down in the matter of certain 
preparatory grooming of the rooms. If what she saw 
was disorder, Jo Ellen found it very picturesque. A 
sense of the rooms, three deep on the parlor floor, came 


PAINTED LIPS 


239 


confusedly through the chatter of introductions. There 
were three men to meet at once: a comedian named 
Cornell, Morrowby, the critic, and a fat person with an 
unrememberable name who had something to do with 
booking. 

In an introduction Jo Ellen always seemed to see 
everything and hear nothing, so that she was at a loss 
for the names afterward. Cornell, because he came 
first and was very funny, she managed to recall by name; 
and she fixed the name of Morrowby, because he came 
second and told her she was the twin of an Irish actress 
he met in London. There were reasons quite as good why 
she might have remembered many of the others who 
came later, but the trick of forgetting to listen worked 
havoc. It was all right so long as she didn’t have to do 
any introducing herself. Meanwhile she was glad to 
know Miss Farrand (in a kind of shepherdess-looking 
frock) on her own account; also, after a while, there 
was the immaculate Brintell, glued to a demure little 
blonde girl with chopped-off hair. 

Everybody seemed to know the house, to know where 
the cigarettes would be, and the appointments of the 
basement, where the walls were covered with photo¬ 
graphs, posters, cartoons, and hideous war trophies. 
A comic artist whose name Cora Vance said was a 
household word, but whose identity Jo Ellen missed 
because Miss Vance quite surely forgot to mention 
wdiat the word was, pointed out to Jo Ellen some of 
the curiosities of the basement. 

“But the cellar is the hit of this show,” said the comic 
artist. “Have you seen it? O well, down we go!” 

Jo Ellen followed the Household Word down the cellar 
steps into a whitewashed space fitted up grotesquely 
as a barroom, with sporting prints, sanded floor, an 
enormous spittoon, a mirror set between the shelves 
full of bottles and glasses, and other realisms of which 
Jo Ellen acquired but a blurred impression. 


JO ELLEN 


240 


‘’Makes me think of Heinie Gabubler’s in Chicago,” 
said the Household Word. “But they’ve left out, ‘In 

case of fire, wring the towel.’ What do you say-? ” 

and he swept his hand toward the barricade rising from 
the brass foot rail. 

It was then that Jo Ellen recognized Cannerton behind 
the bar with an apron fastened under his armpits. 

“Ah!” exclaimed Cannerton, wiping his fingers on the 
apron and thrusting forward a hand toward Jo Ellen, 
“this is indeed a surprise and a pleasure. Name your 
pizen, gents.” 

“They tell me——” began the Household W 7 ord. 

“And they’re right,” declared Cannerton genially. 
“No better rye left on earth.” He pushed forward 
the dark bottle. “What particularly choice nectar 
can I produce for the Eberly Productions? Might I 
suggest-” 

“Try suggesting ginger ale,” Jo Ellen returned with 
a defiant laugh. 

“Excellent for the early evening,” said Cannerton 
with a professional flip of the tall glass, and a less suc¬ 
cessful movement of the opener. He rang a gong in 
caricature of the cash register, and because the sign 
said, “a ring with every drink.” “You have to be 
sober to take your turn at this,” he added, “or you’ll 
miss the real bottle and hand out one of the pictures. 
Think of that heading in the paper: ‘Comic Artist 
Killed by Croton Water.’ ” 

It appeared that the bar was in operation for half an 
hour only. “You see,” remarked the Household Word, 
“there’s a limit to every joke.” 

“Right!” piped Cannerton. “You’re the limit.” 

The whitewashed place filled up before closing time. 
Sharp gusts of laughter followed Jo Ellen up the stairs. 
Some one was singing in the parlor, and Cora Vance, 
finding Jo Ellen, took her by the route of the hallway 
into a recess where there was a divan. 





PAINTED LIPS 


241 


“Let’s be comfortable,” said Miss Vance, folding 
herself adroitly among the pillows. 

They could see the groups scattered throughout the 
rooms; significant faces etched by the amber lights, 
and odd flashes of color through the blue haze. 

Miss Vance lighted a cigarette. 

“Until some bore gets us,” she said, “which means 
that I don’t feel mixish. ” 

A tall girl, who didn’t want a seat but was simply 
looking for a light, glanced down at Cora Vance to 
remark: “I tell Maud that virgins have gone out of 
fashion. Was it the war? I say it’s horrible. Why, 
the business girls make stage women seem stodgy. 
Absolutely. ” 

“Not that you mean to be personal,” Cora Vance 
sent out sharply. 

The tall girl veered to Jo Ellen. “Of course not,” 
she added. “I hate to be personal. I’m never personal— 
except when I’m worshiping the exceptional.” Her 
laugh was accompanied by a look of exaggerated 
shrewdness. 

“She’s better,” said Cora Vance as the tall girl 
moved away, “in lines that are written for her. The 
only thing that’s really happened,” she added, as if 
the tall girl's remark had started a thought, “is that the 
profession has got to be more morbidly talkv than it 
used to be. First it got self-conscious, by all the print. 
Now it moralizes. Makes you sick. Maybe that’s hap¬ 
pened to everybody. But you don’t seem to be that way.” 

“ Which way?” asked Jo Ellen. 

“Moralizing. Figuring out that everything’s rotten. 
Especially girls. I suppose bunching business girls 
is about as sensible as bunching stage women. I know 
stage girls that are hell cats. And I know others that 
are like honest-to-God nuns. It wouldn’t make much 
difference what their job was, either kind; they’d be 
what they are. ” 


242 


JO ELLEN 


Jo Ellen wasn’t sure about this, and said so. ‘"It 
sounds so—so fixed beforehand. And I don’t like to 
believe that.” 

“I mean-” 

A little movement in Cora Vance led Jo Ellen to 
follow her companion’s glance . . . Through the haze 
she saw Stan Lamar. He was laughing at something 
Cornell said. Perhaps it was natural enough that he 
should be there. But she was acutely startled. 

“For instance,” came Cora Vance’s voice—there 
was a faint click as of a swallowed laugh, an unpleasant 
sound—“take the case of my first husband over there. 
He was a certain kind of person. I was a certain kind of 
person. It was no use. We had to crash. A marriage 
like that is sure to be a flop. But I couldn’t know that 
when I was twenty, could I? He looked good. You’d 
say he was some looker, wouldn't you?” 

Jo Ellen could only nod. 

“Maybe he isn’t so reckless as he used to be. Well, 
neither am I. . . . He’s a wonderful boy for slipping 
through. His father has a great drag with producers. 
Politics, too. A little while back there was a mix-up 
and they put the whole police department on getting 
Stan—mostly, I guess, to squeeze the father. Quite a 
story. As usual he got by.” 

“Do you mean,” Jo Ellen asked, “that he’s-” 

“0 1 don’t know what he is. He's vague, Stan is, 
when it comes to occupation. He’s fixed rather formally 
now wdtli the scenery branch, trying to be a business man. 
But he’s a sort of soldier of fortune. Not quite a crook, 
but w-ith a leaning to crookedness. I don’t say that 
because w r e busted. You know% I can see his good 
points, better than I could when w r e w r ere man and wife. 
Honest, I can. And I get a slant on the rest of him, too. 
I w^as crazy enough, one time, to want to shoot him. 
Funny how you will w^ant to shoot a person. I guess old 
Sally Davitt helped cool me off. ‘You think you’re an 




PAINTED LIPS 


243 


actress/ she said, ‘but are you a good enough actress to 
kill a man and act your way to an acquittal?’ Her 
drawling way of putting it made me think, somehow. 
Afterward, I didn't want to hurt him—only to be rid 
of him. At first you feel queer—meeting them, when 
you’re divorced.” < 

“I should think you would,” murmured Jo Ellen. 
There was more she wanted to say—more she ought 
to say—but she didn’t feel quite fit to do it at the 
moment. This could w T ait. 

“But now—well, now it doesn’t bother me. Lucky 
you can get over it. Suppose a woman had to feel 
tied—for ever and ever. Tied, hard and fast. That 
reminds me of what somebody was telling me about a 
cousin of Stan’s—I guess it was Gertie Lawler, told it— 
ah! here come cocktails—borne by the magnificent 
Marone, himself—it must be that the eats are ready.” 

Marone was retarded and the tray of cocktails hung 
at a little distance. 

“What was I saying?—oh yes! This cousin of Stan’s 
was paralyzed on the day of his wedding. The girl 
thought it was the result of a shell wound. That’s 
what he gave out, poor devil. But it appears the thing 
began with a slashing cut—or some sort of frightful 
crushing—when a French father found him with his 
daughter. How’s that for drama? The girl, they say, 
doesn’t—thanks, old dear-” 

The cocktails had come. Jo Ellen saw the tray 
through a crimson veil rent by white lightnings. Perhaps 
this enormous man was the magnificent Marone, and 
it might be his voice that was saying something now 
entangled with the contralto of Cora Vance. Cora 
Vance had lifted a glass. Jo Ellen reached forward and 
succeeded in taking the glass that stood nearest. 
It was filled with a rosy liquor, and glittered there in 
the midst of the blur as a definite thing you could feel 
with your hand. Perhaps you might, if no one stopped 



244 


JO ELLEN 


you—if the magnificent Marone’s hands stayed where 
they were—drink two or three of them. . . . But 
first there was this one, flaming mistily, which Cora 
Vance touched with hers. . . . The rosy liquor scorched 
her throat. She was glad it burned. It would be splendid 
to drink fire, to gulp a molten draft that could cauterize 
the frightful sore spot in her breast . . . and stop the 
thinking. 

“It’s the real thing,” said Cora Vance. 

There was something she must say to Cora Vance. 
She couldn’t keep on putting it off. You couldn’t do 
a trick like that . . . listen like a coward, and say 
nothing . . . nothing. 

But here was Cannerton muttering, “Let’s get down 
before the S. R. O.” 

XIX 

On the stairs “a French father” seemed to be screamed 
in her ears. It made her wabble. She was glad the space 
was narrow, like a funnel that shot you down into 
oblivion. The cocktail might be doing some of the 
wabbling, but . . . “found him with his daughter” 
. . . that could come with a thud that sent you stagger¬ 
ing. Nobody knew. Cannerton, who sat beside her 
at the little table, trying to look arch, and Cornell, 
who sat on the other side with Cora Vance, would think 
it was the cocktail if they thought anything. Were 
they staring? Nothing mattered. Another drink 
didn’t matter. It was another kind, and Cannerton w r as 
saying foolish things. Over in a far corner w r as Stan 
Lamar, about to sit down when he saw her, and—yes, 
he was staring. It wasn’t the cocktail that made her 
believe that. Astonishment of this sort was too plain 
to be mistaken. Would he see that she had been drinking? 
Would he see that she was sitting with the woman who 
thought he was not quite a crook? 

IIow r long did the noisy eating last? There was no 
w^ay of telling that. It seemed astounding that she had 


PAINTED LIPS 


245 


been hungry earlier in the evening. You couldn’t keep 
on being hungry with so many other feelings tearing 
at you. You couldn’t follow Cornell’s imitation of 
George Cohan, at which everybody laughed as if they 
had never heard an imitation. You couldn’t understand 
how they all managed to ignore the fearful craziness of 
the world. Would they all think it was dramatic that 
the girl shouldn’t know how the crippled bridegroom 
came to be crippled? Would Cora Vance think it was 
dramatic that the bride should be told in just this way? 
Very likely it was stagy. Some real things were so stagy 
you couldn’t stage them. Cannerton had said that— 
Cannerton, wdio felt privileged to be babbling about 
her “adorable blush.” How long had Stan Lamar 
known what Cora Vance knew? Was Stan noticing 
how her face looked? The room wouldn’t be blurred 
to him. He could drink cocktails without feeling this 
way. And he had not been hit. It wasn’t probable 
that anyone there had been hit quite like this. When 
you had been hit you were kept busy holding on to 
yourself. It was all you could do. . . . 

Cora Vance was laughing. She couldn’t know what 
Jo Ellen was going to tell her when she had a chance. 
She never would guess that. Jo Ellen laughed. Some¬ 
thing that twitched in her was as much like the beginning 
of a cry as of a laugh. Presently everything was shifted. 
They were moving upstairs. Cora Vance had forgotten 
her. Everybody had forgotten her. She was glad of it. 
To be alone—it would be wonderful to be alone. . . . 

Here was Stan, grasping her hand and looking at her 
with a kind of fierceness. 

He needn’t think- 

“I’m going,” she said. 

He did not protest. She knew why when she saw him 
waiting near the door as she came with her hat on. If 
he went out with her she could ask him . . . 

But she must see Cora Vance before she went away— 



246 


JO ELLEN 


to say good night. She ought to see Miss Lenning— 
to thank them both for a delightful evening. She 
wavered, while Stan twirled his hat. If only she had 
told Cora Vance something. . . . She could see her 
through the crowd, and Cora Vance saw her, saw her 
hatted, and lifted her eyebrows inquiringly, before she 
came dashing through. 

“ Running away-? ” and then she stopped. There 

was a curtness in her stopping, an utterly astonished 
stare, and then a smile—a hard smile. 

“Stan,” she said, “you’re still a fast worker.” 

Jo Ellen had been about to put out her hand. The 
look of Cora Vance made touching her seem very 
difficult. 

“You see,” said Stan, “Miss Rewer and I have met 
before.” 

“I understand,” murmured Miss Vance. 

Jo Ellen clutched at her. “You don't understand, 
because—because I haven’t had a chance to-” 

“My dear,” returned Miss Vance, and there was a 
click in her voice like ice in a glass, “you needn’t apolo¬ 
gize to me.” 

Jo Ellen knew that in a moment she would be making 
herself ridiculous by letting the tears come. If she were 
going to cry she would prefer to cry without cocktails. 

She reached past Stan Lamar, opened the street 
door, and ran out. 

How did he find the taxi, and come to be standing 
there waiting for her to step in? There were a lot of 
things she couldn’t remember afterward. 

“I’m not going home,” she said. 

“Not-?” 

“I’m not going downtown. I’m going home” 

“Yes, yes! All right.” 

“You can take me to the subway,” she added. 

He turned to the driver. “Dyckman Street and 
Broadway. ” 






PAINTED LIPS 


247 


She heard this as she climbed into the cab. Perhaps the 
driver paused, incredulously, for Stan added, “Inwood.” 

“ We can’t drive all that distance, ” Jo Ellen interposed. 

He laughed as he came in beside her and the motor 
started. “That isn’t the end of the world!” 

“Yes, it is,” she cried. “That’s just what it is. The 
end of the world.” 

“You can’t make me believe that. It’s a great 
beginning place, I say.” 

She sat rigidly, taking a deep, tremulous breath. 

“I suppose I’m drunk,” she said. 

He began to protest. 

“But it doesn’t matter.” 

“Do you mean,” he asked, “that you’re afraid to go 
downtown?” 

“Oh no! Not afraid. Not that.” She wedged 
herself into the corner and looked over at him. “Did 
you know how Marty was hurt? ” 

This seemed to be unexpected. “Yes,” he answered. 
“Not at first. Afterward—after Nineteenth Street. 
It wasn’t so long ago it came out. ” 

“Came out?” 

“ Some dirty tongue in his company. It was bound to 
come out. Who told you?” 

“Cora Vance.” 

“Cora?” 

“To-night.” 

“Holy—say, that was a rotten thing to do!” He 
seemed to be stupefied. 

“She doesn’t know anything about me—she doesn’t 
know I’m married. She told it—well, as a story—because 
she saw you and happened to mention that she had 
been married to you. She had been married to you, and 
then you had a cousin—you see? Wasn’t it simple?” 

“Yes, it was simple. It was rotten, too.” 

Jo Ellen couldn’t see his face distinctly. He was bent 
upon being indignant. Perhaps he was indignant. 



248 


JO ELLEN 


Certainly he was disconcerted—extraordinarily. A 

person might be rather drunk and see that much. 

“It must have been Pritchard. ” 

“You mean that it wasn’t you?” 

“I mean that Pritchard told me. And he knows her.” 

“It’s all so simple.” 

He made a sudden movement. “For everybody but 
you.” he exclaimed, bringing his fist down. 

“Me?” She shrugged and laughed—a cocktail 
laugh that made him search her face again. “I don’t 
count—except to make a bit of scandal talk. I’m only 
the fool bride. It’s none of her business what the man 
does before she marries him. She would be busy if 
she went into that, wouldn’t she? Of course, if the 
results are nasty-” 

“Don’t talk that way. It isn’t like you.” 

“You think it’s the stuff I had in there. It isn’t. 
It’s just the few words. And I had words enough down¬ 
town. Funny about words, isn’t it? You think this isn’t 
like me. It is like me. Exactly. I’m not the same person. 
That’s it. When you keep on being hammered- 

« J _5) 

“No. You’re sitting there being sorry for the innocent 
fool. There’ll be a lot of sorry talk when everybody 
knows. ” 

“Look here!”—he faced her with an appearance of 
great earnestness—“I don’t say you shouldn’t rip it 
out. Damn it! You’ve had a raw deal. Who’s going 
to blame you for saying so?” She was looking at the 
outlines of the chauffeur. When she moved to look at 
Stan, in a moment of silence, she saw his silhouette, 
with the head lowered. “I’ve had a few raw deals of 
my own,” he was saying. 

The taxi was swinging through the Park. 

“ You’ll think that’s different, ” he continued. “ Things 
you bring on yourself. Suppose they are different. 
They hurt just the same. People haven’t a right-” 






PAINTED LIPS 


249 


“He’d talk that way,” said Jo Ellen quickly. 

“All the same— I’m not pounding him. You’re the 
one he has to square himself with. Isn’t that so? You— 
not all the knifers. ” 

“I wish nobody would try to square anything. I 
wish I could be let alone. I can’t have that. Uptown 
I have advice, tons of it. Downtown I have plain hell. ” 

The taxi lurched at a curve and she put out a balancing 
hand. He caught it and bent close. “Let me say it. 
This isn’t one place or the other. Somewhere in between. 
A friend can be a friend, can’t he? Without knocking 
anybody. ” 

She drew her hand aw r ay. “You’ll be advising me 
in a minute. ” 

“ But you can’t chuck friends. You were a friend when 
I was up against it. ” 

“A friend?” She peered at the swishing lines of the 
street. “I thought I was marrying a friend. Don't 
talk about friends. When I think— Lord!” 

Lamar had an inspiration. It was to be silent for a 
few moments. 

Then he swung the question: “Are you sorry you 
took those drinks?” 

“No!” She threw this loudly, as if it were a missile. 
“I’m glad.” 

“Just what I would say. That’s the answer, isn’t 
it? I don’t mean booze. I mean shaking out of the 
strait-jacket. I don’t know what they’ve done down 
there. No, I don’t. But I do know what they’re 
doing to you. Even anybody who didn’t—who didn’t 
care for you could see that. Squeezing the life out of 
you. God! When I think of the way I saw you run! 
You weren’t built to be kept in a cage.” 

“Go on, ” she said. “In a cage. How do you get out?” 

He found her hands, clenched in her lap, and, because 
he gave the effect of being about to go, he was able 
to hold them. 


250 


JO ELLEN 


“Well,” he proceeded, more aggressively, “what do 
they do for you? Where do you come in? Why should 
you be locked up on a roof?—let out to go and earn a 
salary, and hurried back to the other job of kitchen 
mechanic? Where’s your life? You’ve got to refuse 
to be locked up, whether they like it or not, whether 
that sweet aunt of mine pulls that stiff face or not. 
You’ve got to be free. If you have to smash things to do 
it—well, smash them. What can they say?” His 
voice went lower. “How much love are they bringing 
into your life? Love.” He slipped an arm across her 
shoulders. “They can say that you’ve got to live 
without love, but that won’t make it so.” 

She shook her head. “You say it all,” she thought, 
and spoke as she thought. “And I wish I didn’t know 
why you say it.” 

Yes, she knew—she had known from the moment he 
stood at the door, that he was being cautious—that he 
•was saying “they” that he was not openly attacking 
Marty, that he was remembering everything. It was 
amazing that you could know this with the hot feeling 
in your throat and your ears humming, that you could 
know and let him go on because you didn’t care, and 
because he was helping you not to care. 

The hand on her shoulder tightened. She felt his 
breath very close to her face. 

“No matter what you say, I love you.” 

The passionate reach of his fingers, the swift coming of 
his lips, a fearful warm thrill—and she was not fighting. 
She was letting her head fall back and a kind of crimson 
thunder was booming above the world. It was as if 
she sat in a quivering boat that sank steadily into a 
great black pool that was the night, and as if she were 
so tired that she didn’t care whether the pool might 
presently close over her head. . . . 

Her cheek was against his shoulder. She w r as fright¬ 
fully alone . . . and his lips were moving in her hair. 


PAINTED LIPS 251 

He was muttering about love, telling her all the things 
she knew. His words droned like the motor. They 
raced across her brain as the twisted images of the streets 
rushed through the narrowed slit of her lashes. She was 
alone. I\ot caring was being alone. It was being alone 
to forget that journeys came to an end. There was 
always an end. You couldn’t float forever, or sink for¬ 
ever. You couldn t forever not care. There was always 
the place where you had to begin thinking again. . . . 

She knew when they came to Dyckman Street, and 
sat up sharply. It was incredible that she should be so 
piercingly aware of the street. But it was true. Sud¬ 
denly she was awake to everything, to the dark rocks 
at Broadway, to the misty heaping of the trees and the 
solemn midnight silence. 

Lamar put his hand on the door as the cab halted. 

“No,” she said firmly. “You’re not to get out.” 

In a moment she was leaping from the other side and 
had closed the door again with the sound that seemed 
to say “No!” once more. 

Goodnight! she cried to him. He saw her running. 


PART SIX 


The Other High Place 

i 

F ROM a turn in the dark road she glanced back¬ 
ward. She had an instant’s fear that he might 
have risked defiance of that peremptory refusal. 
But she was alone. Until she reached the door it was 
as if the enveloping dimness snatched her up—and had 
her dangling. The inner tumult went on. 

A kiss in a cab. The world would survive that. There 
was a way of taking such things. They could be a joke. 
And they could be like a fearful drink, like pouring 
fire into you. They could change the color of darkness. 
They could make you afraid, as when you looked back 
and wondered. . . . 

The house was innocently quiet. What a pity to 
wake it up! It would not recognize you with a grunt, 
and turn over to go to sleep again. It would be aston¬ 
ished. It wouldn’t know about Stan Lamar, but there 
was no way of avoiding confession of a crisis, and this 
would mean a scene. It would make you feel that you 
must have scenes for the rest of your life. In some ways 
this appeared more trying than to have faced the situation 
on the roof. . . . But she couldn't have gone downtown; 
she couldn’t think there. She must have time to think. 

There was a kind of romantic silliness about going home 
to your mother. Brides were reputed to have done this 
very often. There was a quarrel about eggs, or bath soap, 
or the color of wall paper, and the new wife went sobbing 
to mamma. People giggled over the agony of the young 
thing. She would be advised tremendously. She would 

252 


THE OTHER HIGH PLACE 


253 


return to her husband drenched with precepts; or perhaps 
he would come contritely and bear her off. Then again, 
he might masterfully wait until she saw fit to stop 
sulking. If there were cases where the bride’s dis¬ 
illusionment had some really desperate origin, she was 
not less belittled by the process of quitting. A confes¬ 
sion of failure couldn’t be made comfortable. Surely not 
many brides reached their pang of failure more cruelly. 
Surely few of them ever felt cheaper or more soddenly 
miserable before the family door bell—the door bell that 
was to clang the failure. . . . She was acting like a fail¬ 
ure, standing there in the dark at the top of the steps. 

As she put out her hand to the bell, the door opened. 

“ Ellen!” 

It was her mother, whispering the name. 

So the whole house wouldn’t be routed. 

“I heard something,” Mrs. Rewer added, “lying 
there awake—thinking about you . Wasn’t that strange? 
What’s happened? Are you alone?” 

They walked softly, and when the light flared, the 
mother’s eyes were alert. Jo Ellen wondered if she 
still bore signs of being, or of having been, drunk. 

“I was at a party,” she said, “and it seemed a little 
easier to disturb this house—easier than the other one. ” 

If she could get to bed before having to expound 
anything she would be better off. The theory might 
have worked itself out if Mrs. Rewer hadn’t put those 
strong arms of hers about the lithe young figure. . . . 

II 

Crying, with her head in her mother’s lap, just like 
the other brides she had thought of as so silly. She 
couldn’t see her mother’s face when she came to the top 
of the story. She could only feel the tightening of the 
hands and a faint taut tremor in the knees. 

“And I stood it all,” she said—all of it—not very 
beautifully, but I stood it—because it came along 


£54 


JO ELLEN 


with everything, and I wanted to be a sport. If the 
war broke him, well, I had to stand that. I had to take 
my share. It was the thing that got me to where I 
married him—that limp. You know that. Yes, I 
know I said before he went away that I would, but if 
he hadn’t come with the hurt—I guess it made him seem 
pathetic or something, so that it was hard to admit 
changing. I don’t believe I did change. I never really 
cared enough for him to marry him. I ought never to 
have said I would. But when I thought the war—and 
it vxisn’t the war! The war never put a mark on him!” 

“It \cas the war.” 

Jo Ellen’s head come up with a fling. 

“No!” she cried so loudly that her mother raised a 
hand in warning, “it wasn’t the war. Just a beastly 
matter of a woman. Can't vou see whv he never wanted 
to talk about army surgeons? He knew he couldn’t 
get any government help here on an injury like that. 
If the thing came to being looked up . . . And we were 
fooled-” 

“He’s stricken all the same—for life.” 

“You’re as furious as I am,” Jo Ellen muttered bit- 
terlv. “You want to smooth me out.” 

In the white nightgown her mother looked like a 
matronly angel who wept for the miseries of the world. 

“I’m not liking him for it,” said Mrs. Rewer steadily, 
“or saying that it wasn’t rotten—a man who had a 
wife pledged! It was horrible. But it smashed him. 
The punishment’s been laid on pretty heavy, without us. ” 

“I know. But why should I be smashed, too? I 
was willing to take my share of what the war did. 
Why should I have to share this? It isn’t fair. You 
don’t say it’s fair, do you?” 

“No, I don’t say it's fair. Women have to stand a 
good deal that isn’t fair. The whole game of war isn’t 
fair to women. Everybody knows that. And one of 
the reasons it isn’t fair—but what’s the use of going 





THE OTHER HIGH PLACE 255 

into that—going into all that a man may bring home 
besides fighting marks? It’s all war.” 

“I see!” Jo Ellen emitted the beginnings of a hys¬ 
terical laugh. “Bullets and women. And the hero 
comes home—to another woman. Wonderful arrange¬ 
ment! If there’s any of him left, the leavings are for 
her. And she must be grateful that there is anything 
left. Even if he looked the same as ever, she couldn’t 
tell what had happened to him, could she? She’s allowed 
to go on hating war—patiently. Whatever he does she 
mustn’t hate him” 

Her mother was silent. WTien Jo Ellen looked at her 
she saw, not theory or argument, but suffering. A 
whiteness had come over her face. There was a des¬ 
perateness in the fixity of her eyes, as if she were tracing 
the outlines of an issue that couldn’t be met. She was 
the mother. She must explain life, she must make 
Providence plausible, she must talk bravely in the dark 
to prove that it has no ghosts, she must kiss bruises 
and lie about them. 

WTiat Jo Ellen saw stung her afresh. 

“And after all that, there’s Mrs. Simms. She isn’t 
the war. ” 

“No, damn her!” 

This was not like a matronly angel, but it was out. 
Contrition seemed to bring the blood back into Mrs. 
Rewer’s face. Perhaps it was a relief to get this said 
at last, even if she felt belittled. A damn was a bad 
example. But she had often thought of Mrs. Simms 
with a damn, and a stricken Jo Ellen pried the thing 
out of her. 

“I know!” exclaimed Mrs. Rewer. “She treats you 
as if you did it.” 

There could be no conflict over this. 

Suddenly Mrs. Rewer asked, “Do you suppose she— 
she knows?” 

The eyes met. “Knows—what?” 



256 


JO ELLEN 


“Knows how Marty was hurt/’ 

“I don’t know. I haven’t had time to think. They 
stick close. Probably she does know. ” 

“I wonder.” Mrs. Hewer’s hands became quiet 
again. Presently they clenched. “It would serve her 
right if we had the marriage annulled. ” 

At sight of the quick flush in Jo Ellen’s face, the mother 
groped her way back from the brink. 

“I guess I don’t quite mean that. We mustn’t let 
that woman make us-” 

Jo Ellen stood up. 

“I’m going to bed.” 

Mrs. Rewer got to her feet responsively. “We’ll 
sleep on it. I’m not sure that your room is quite as 
it ought to be.” 

“I won’t care,” said Jo Ellen. 

The parting for the night was stealthy. At the end, 
the two clung dumbly together for several moments. 

hi 

For a time it seemed to Jo Ellen that the awful word 
“annulled” would keep her awake for the rest of the 
night. But a heaviness, immense and peremptory, 
blotted out all implications. Even thought of the morn¬ 
ing was left unfinished. 

The great fact of the morning w r as that Jo Ellen 
slept until nearly nine o’clock, when Uncle Ben and her 
grandmother had gone. 

“ I took a chance, ” said Mrs. Rewer quietly. “ Looked 
to me as if you needed it. ” 

Jo Ellen was firm about the necessities. “ I must be at 
the office by ten.” This meant hustling. She put on a dress 
she had not taken downtown, and hurried her breakfast. 

Mrs. Rewer withheld the questions she had ready. 
At going away time the principal one was answered. 

“I’m coming back here,” said Jo Ellen. “Until I 
get straightened out.” 



THE OTHER HIGH PLACE 


257 


“If they telephone—” her mother began. The 
meaning of “they” was not obscure. 

“Won’t it do that I’m not feeling well?” 

“I think it will. It’ll have to do. But you’re feeling 
a little better? ” 

“A little.” 

The telephone call came to the office, soon after her 
arrival. The voice was Marty’s. 

“Uncle Ben’s been here,” Marty stammered. 

“Uncle Ben?” 

Of course. It was like Uncle Ben. Plunging through 
to the trouble point. 

“He’s been here. He’ll—I’ve told him everything. 
Everything. I want—but over the phone-” 

“Don’t,” admonished Jo Ellen. 

“You’ll be home to dinner?” 

“I can’t tell just when I’ll be home.” 

There was a muttered sound as of a struggle to be 
silent, of words swallowed desperately. With this 
contact, tenuous as a wire, the two flickered for a moment. 
Marty was first to hang up the receiver. It could be 
this way—if you chose, anything might be blotted out— 
or seem to be, for a little while—until thoughts began 
wedging their way in, until you began wondering . . . 
about yourself; until pictures of yourself, pulled away, 
standing quite apart from everything, began to form 
themselves in the clutter, and you found yourself 
taking apprehensive breaths, perhaps with a kind of 
guilty awe. 

The interval gave time for speculation upon the 
attitude of Uncle Ben. No hint of what this might be 
appeared in his later telephone call. He wanted to see 
her, at lunch time or at the end of the day. He would 
wait for her at either time. Delay would not matter. 
“I have all the time there is,” he said to her. 

She told him she was returning to Inwood, and pre¬ 
ferred the going-home hour. Under the circumstances 



258 


JO ELLEN 


it made her miserable that Eberly should keep her 
until nearly seven o’clock. It would have been better 
to have had Uncle Ben come into the office, instead of 
letting him hover in the foyer of the building, though 
he had no complaint, but only a comment on the extraor¬ 
dinary interestingness of the Jewish boy who presided 
over the tobacco stand. 

“I’ve telephoned home,” he said, “that we’re going to 
bat around. This part of it’s our affair. I don’t want 
either your mother or mine in it just now. Until we 
get an angle. Well find a nice quiet table at Mallory’s. ” 

Bogert had a New Yorker’s feeling that anything 
could be done at a restaurant table. Jo Ellen was less 
assured. She was glad to have Uncle Ben to herself 
for the period of his report. That was quite practical, 
perhaps. Yet she wished it might not have been a 
restaurant. 

“What I was thinking,” he said as they walked, 
“is that it’s a mighty good thing you have a job. Ain’t 
that so? A job that keeps you going. You’d be crazy, 
sitting around. And you’d go dippy down on that roof— 
all day of it. Fine view, too. Wonderful view. I 
didn’t realize what a swing there was to it. I didn't 
look at it much this morning. You’ll guess that. But 
I saw it, because Marty was outside. He was my man. 
I went straight for him. Mrs. Gloom looked at me as if 
I was a sneak thief caught in the act. O yes! She gave 
me a goshawful look, and I had to find a way of telling 
her that I wasn’t interested in her conversation a little 
bit. Of course, I did it in a nice enough way. I even 
asked how she was. And how Simms was. She didn't 
ask how anybody was. Naturally. She was just putting 
the fear of God into me. Anyway, that’s the way I 
felt at the beginning. I don’t say a person could get 
used to her. That would be going pretty far. But she’s 
a human being. We’ve got to remember that.” 

“It’s rather hard to remember,” remarked Jo Ellen. 


THE OTHER HIGH PLACE 


£59 


“O well—but, say, let’s get something to eat before we 
start chinning.” Yet Bogert permitted few pauses 
after they had reached his chosen corner in Mallory’s. 
He had astonishing suggestions about food. He would 
have liked to build a food trench in which they might 
hide from the missiles of misfortune. The fact that 
this was not a lunch, and need not be hurried, became 
something to consider and point out. 

Jo Ellen’s announcement that she was not hungry, 
disappointed him. He would have preferred to see her 
eat a fortifying meal. The fact that she ordered little 
and ate less gave her an effect of fragility. She was not 
fragile and he hated any such suggestion. 

“My notion is,” he held forth to her, “when things 
are going wrong, stoke up. When in doubt, eat. People 
without enough food inside don’t think right. ” 

Jo Ellen smiled at him with a fair imitation of patience. 
“I’m trying not to think,” she said. 

“Maybe that isn’t so bad, either. A person can think 
themselves into—into most anything. But I don’t 
need to say that to you. I don’t say it to hear myself 
talk either. What I mean is that—well, we’ve got to 
think about something , haven’t we? I guess that’s so. 
We can’t just stop the machinery. The wheels get to 
going round whether we want them to or not. Mine 
went whizzing this morning on the train. Hell’s bells, 
I said, this girl—O I was off for fair, I can tell you. And 
when I got at him—there he was, out on the roof with 
a story magazine. I said to myself, he’s reading some 
fool yarn about love—and him , what a mess he’s made 
of it. That’s what I thought—for a second. Then when 
he looked at me—God! what a way of looking! How 
could he change so? Why, he looks—you know, he 
knocked me off my pins. It seems to me he has the same 
eyes. Maybe that’s it—the same eyes, but—anyway, 
he isn’t there . Sounds as if I was describing him—as if 
you didn’t know. Not seeing him for a while makes a 


260 


JO ELLEN 


difference. Sort of hits you. The worst was the way 
he looked at me—as if he was afraid. Not exactly 
plain fright. I don’t suppose he was really afraid. 
It wasn’t that. It might be it wasn’t seeing me when 
he didn’t expect to, but something I made him think of, 
suddenly. Afterward, when he was shaking hands, and 
I was pulling up one of those roof chairs beside him, 
he seemed more like himself. And I didn’t waste any 
time. It was a man-to-man thing, I told him. We’d 
better have it out. Somehow I knew he’d lay his cards 
down. I didn’t need any tricks. I didn’t spring any 
surprise—any more than telling him I’d heard something, 
and how about it? 

“At first he blinked. Must he tell me? Was it all up? 
I could see that. Perhaps he’d stopped going back to 
that affair—going back to say it. He couldn’t help 
going back. The ghost of it he carries around would 
keep reminding him. But he might have thought he 
was through telling the story. You would expect it to 
hurt, and you would expect a man to wish he could shovel 
the dirt over it and be through—through with all but 
the ghost. I understand that. I told him so. But there 
was one telling he had left out. If you had to live with 
the ghost you had a right to be told. It was bad business 
to let you get it from somebody else. And this had 
happened. 

“‘Not Arnold?’ he gasped at me. You would think 
that skyscraper had begun to crack open. 

“No, not Arnold, I said. He ought to know there 
were plenty of others. Anyway, you had been told, and 
it was pretty rough to get it that way. He sat there 
blinking, with the tears running straight down and 
dropping off his chin.” 

“Tell me this,” asked Jo Ellen. “Does she know?” 

“Yes. She knows. She didn’t know at first. He 
told the old man. There was no way out of that. But 
they fixed it up not to tell her. That didn’t work at all. 



THE OTHER HIGH PLACE 


261 


When she began talking about what the government 
ought to do, and having Arnold go after the records so 
they could put in a claim, and so on, never letting up on 
what an outrage it was, there was nothing else to do but 
tell her. And there’s where you get the mother of it. 
She stuck to him. You have to give her credit for that. 
A lot of credit. She’s no weak sister. Of course, she 
would stick to him. Why not? He was smashed, 
wasn’t he? A mother doesn’t ask how the son is smashed 
before she does anything. ” 

Jo Ellen detected a moral. Her eyes were fixed 
absently upon the smoky vista of the restaurant. 

“A wife might be mean enough to ask,” she said. 

“O the mother asked! I guess she asked enough. 
But it wasn’t a bargain. See? Not a bargain. She was 
bound to be for him. If he brought it on himself, so 
much the worse for him—all the sadder case. No matter 
how it happened, there he was, smashed, finished. If 
he hadn’t had that fall, in just that way, on the day he 
was married-” 

“Then she wouldn’t have hated me." 

Bogert faltered and gathered himself again. “I 
don’t say she hates anybody—unless it might be that 
Frenchman. ” 

“And the French girl.” Jo Ellen flung the words/and 
Bogert gazed uneasily at the disturbed lips. 

“She’d have to hate them. Sure. It’s so easy to get 
up a hate. But how do we know—about anything? 
That girl. What do we know about her? You might 
say she was to blame, because she knew something and 
didn’t tell it—she knew something the father had said. 
If she had told Marty, he might—well, he might simply 
not have been there. He wouldn't have been there, 
he says. He doesn’t charge it all up to the girl. I’ll 
say that for him. He takes his man’s share. I guess 
he knows he has to. Anyway, he takes it. He acted 
like a fool. She wasn’t even pretty, he says. . . . But 



JO ELLEN 


262 

there’s no use going over all that. When the father broke 
in to where they were ... it was frightful. I think 
the maniac must have thought he killed him. He used 
something like a butcher’s cleaver, but nobody seems 
to know just what it was. Arnold Pearson—he saw the 
father running, with his face working horribly—they 
never did find him , poor devil. Good runners in that 
family—the girl ran, too—out of a back door. And there 
was Marty, with an old woman bending over him, 
when the boys arrived. The surgeon thought he was 
done for-” 

Bogert closed his fist, and looked at it as if it were an 
exhibit. 

“I’m telling it, Jo Ellen, because you wouldn’t want 
to hear him tell it—not now. I don’t know that he 
ought to have told me. He might have said, ‘Damn 
you, look at me. I got it all. I’m paying. Why should 
I have to go through the thing again for anybody?’ 
Of course, that wouldn’t be having it quite straight. 
He isn’t getting it all. You come in. I told him that was 
why I was there. ‘You might figure it out,’ I said, ‘that 
you didn't have to tell her because you thought you 
were all right. All right but the limp. It was rather 
dirty to let her think the limp meant a shell wound. 
All the same, a good many men would have done what 
you did on the theory that the slate’s washed clean when 
a man marries. Of course, it isn’t washed clean, but we 
men have been able to put that over. Most women 
don’t ask a thing. They’re satisfied to open new books 
and start even. When you broke down, all that was 
changed. You couldn’t wipe that off the slate. Hell, 
no! It was a different thing from that minute. It 
would be like being cut again to have to tell her. But 
you ought to have done it. Too late now to do it right. 
What you have to think of is what you’ve done to her 
and—and what’s left to be done on her account. I’m 
going to tell her the story to get it over with. If she’d 



THE OTHER HIGH PLACE 


263 


never heard a word, you—or I either—might have been 
weak enough to keep quiet. Now that she’s had the 
word there’s nothing else for it. No matter how it 
hurts her, it’s better than leaving her to do a lot of 
imagining—making it worse than it was, maybe.’ ” 

“Could it be worse?” 

This came so faintly that Bogert might have doubted 
whether the question was more than a movement of 
the lips. 

“Yes—yes, Jo Ellen, I think it could be worse—if 
you started filling things in that’re not so. When your 
mother said you had heard something, I wanted to stop 
the danger of that—of yonr piling up a bunch of horrors 
and putting Marty in the middle, like he was a monster— 
the chief monster. I tell you, Jo Ellen, this boy you 
married could have been the w^orst sex sneak ever, and 
if nothing noisy had happened he might be the candy 
husband and grow up to pass the plate in church. 
Then again, not being bad at all, he might make one 
mistake —one mistake—and, if circumstances ran against 
him, down comes his whole world in a mess. If you want 
to know what I think, this wasn’t like Marty. That’s 
a great point to think of—wdiether a thing’s like a person. 
When it comes to punishments, we ought to get more 
for wrongness that’s like us than for wTongness that 
isn’t like us. Of course, circumstances don’t consider 
that at all. You only have to lean too far over the edge 
of the roof once , and gravitation does the trick. Punish¬ 
ments we put on ought to be different. Here’s a boy 
sails away with his regiment-” 

“Are you going to say it was the war?” Jo Ellen 
demanded. 

“The w r ar?” Bogert gave apprehensive consideration 
to this, then w T ent on with a heightened vehemence, 
holding his voice to his best imitation of a whisper: 
“No! That’s just what I don’t do. He might have 
gone to Schenectady to sell gas fixtures and had the 




264 


JO ELLEN 


same thing happen to him. Why—” his tones quivered 
in a fresh visualization, “—it might have happened at 
Inwood, and the maniac might have been old Tice! 
We know it wouldn't have happened at Inwood for a 
hundred per cent good reason—right there was Jo Ellen! ” 

“ I see. When she isn’t right there-” 

Jo Ellen saw the little beads of perspiration on Bogert’s 
lips. He was throwing himself into a great effort. He 
was pleading mightily. A kind of cruelty appeared in 
letting him do it—in forcing him to do it. If he was right, 
only an utterly miserable selfishness could let him go on. 
Yet he could be wrong. Affection was often wrong; 
not, perhaps, in asking charity, but in marking out ways. 
Bogert was sending her back to Marty—and to Marty’s 
mother. This w r as what it meant. Back to the roof. 
No one knew whether she intended to go back to the 
roof. They were playing safe. Probably this was what 
affection always did—urged you to return to the suffering, 
and be noble. It wasn’t merely an issue between two 
people. There were a lot of others to consider—others 
who had made a pretty diagram for you and hated to 
see it mussed. A separated wife imposed enormous 
inconveniences. Keeping people in a nice procession, 
two by two, preserved the peace of social traffic. The 
peace of the two people . . . 

“And there’s this,” said Bogert fervently. “It isn’t 
fair to size up this boy the way he is now. You know’ 
how he ivas. I always liked him. You liked him. 
Suppose he had had a fever, or something. Or say 
T. B. You’d stick to him. You’d fight it out. You 
wouldn’t quit. You wouldn’t ask whether it was his 
fault. What I say is, that tumble wffien he was with 
you was part of the calamity. See? His fault was all 
back of that. But the smash—take the wiiole of it 
together—isn’t it right that his partner—even if he let 
himself forget her for a moment—should remember that 
the victim is a partner and up against it hard? He’s 



THE OTHER HIGH PLACE 


265 


down. No shell got him—he was hit by life! You know, 
life can pound us. God Almighty-!” 

Bogert glanced about him as if in desperation. There 
was something he wished to say that needed another 
setting. After talking in so feverish a defiance of sur¬ 
roundings, save for the painful effort to limit the dimen¬ 
sion of his tones, he suddenly winced at the glare in 
which they sat. 

“Don’t argue any more,” protested Jo Ellen. 

“I’m only-” 

“ Let me think it out. ” 

He glared at her anxiously. “See here—we didn’t 
order any dessert. What do you think of that?” 

“ I don’t want dessert, thank you. You’re awfully kind 
to me, and I know I seem like a troublesome affair. ” 

“You’ll be troublesome if you don’t eat. And I’ve 
spoiled your appetite. Look at your plate.” 

Jo Ellen smiled upon him wearily. Bogert himself 
had eaten little. He had no certainty of having moved 
her, no certainty that there was any profound need 
to move her. He knew only that she had turned to 
Inwood, that she had announced her intention of going 
there for a second night. This represented a situation 
of towering importance. If anything could be done, now 
was the time. And he felt defeated. 

“What do you say?” he cried. “Let’s go to a show!” 

She didn’t care for a show. They had better go home. 
Mother and Grandmother would be wondering. 

“Don’t you care how anybody wonders.” He put 
out the bills for the waiter. “Don’t you waste any 
time thinking about anybody but yourself—and that 
boy. That’s the game—you and Marty. Give everybody 
else the air. Mrs. Simms, too. Let her gloom around 
as much as she wants to. ” 

“I wonder what you'd do with her,” Jo Ellen said 
dully. He was glad she didn’t flare. The omission 
seemed promising. 





266 


JO ELLEN 


“ Want to chloroform her, probably. For her own good. 
It’s a blamed shame we can’t chloroform some people. 
And yet . . . Well, she’s his mother. You couldn’t 
chloroform a mother. God, no!” 

L Tliis was no ending to all that Bogert had wanted 
to say. No use keeping it up. Perhaps he had done 
something. The story was out—all that was rightly 
to be told—and that was something. When he saw her 
standing there, ready to go forth with him, ready to 
rattle toward Inwood where the others would get at 
her, he knew that anything might happen—anything. 
All the strong arms on earth couldn’t forcibly lift her 
over the chasm of her difficulty. She must make her 
own leaps. She must do her own living. Once he could 
pick her up (how she used to wriggle!) and carry her 
anywhere. She had straddled his neck and driven 
him with two clutches in his wiry hair, wrenching a 
howl out of him with those clever little fingers. An 
altogether amazing girl child she was. . . . And now . . . 
now T that fine free stride of hers must follow her own path. 
You could walk beside her, and feel as proud as you 
liked, or worry until you sweated. You could gab 
along and be intoxicated by her listening look. But 
you couldn’t gather her up, or tote her any place you 
wanted to. She wouldn’t straddle your neck and pull 
your hair and let you do stunts and yell joyously. She 
was a woman. 

IV 

The mother and grandmother were quite assured 
of Ben Bogert’s intentions; not because he had mentioned 
them, but because it was inevitable that he should have 
them, and the telephone message established the cir¬ 
cumstance of the meeting. It is probable that each 
made an estimate of the value to be placed on the inter¬ 
cession. Each had a way of loving Ben, and each had 
her own habit of discipline. They would have agreed 
that whatever he did would require isolation. His 


THE OTHER HIGH PLACE 


267 


mental gestures needed space. He was easily frustrated 
in a group. They could fancy him as saying, “If I had 
her alone— ” He had her alone, and who could say what 
would be going on in her head while he talked? Both of 
the women felt a piercing curiosity as to Jo Ellen, a 
curiosity which each after her own method had sought 
to muffle or to justify. Again and again one and the 
other put herself in Jo Ellen’s place, escaped, and 
went back. Neither had had any individual experience 
that seemed to fit them for an altogether conscientious 
estimate, and when their thoughts wandered to some 
tale or circumstance that threatened to present a parallel, 
they always ended by deciding that Jo Ellen’s situation 
was not to be measured by any other. 

Of these thoughts the two women said very little to 
each other. For one thing, there was Billy at the living- 
room table wrestling with his algebra. Even absent- 
minded boys often had absurdly acute ears. When 
Billy knew that his sister was expected, after having 
spent one night at the house, he looked up to ask, 

“What’s Jo Ellen doing here?” 

“I suppose she could make a visit,” returned his 
mother. 

“Seems as if she was living here again,” Billy observed, 
returning to his book. 

To Jo Ellen Billy’s presence softened the awkwardness 
of the home-coming. There might be constraint in 
remembering that he was there, but she was glad of an 
interval in which the bitter subject must wait. 

“I’ve nearly talked her to death,” said Bogert. 

Mrs. Bogert spoke of Jo Ellen’s office work, and gave 
some account of her own affairs, which had, it appeared 
gathered freshly picturesque features. Mrs. Bogert 
still berated New York in total, while admitting that 
certain of its traits, including those particularly to be 
despised, were not unfavorable to business. However, 
Jo Ellen soon realized that her grandmother was not 



268 


JO ELLEN 


at her brightest. A dullness fell upon them all, a quiv¬ 
ering dullness that bespoke the hidden excitement. 
Her sense of the hidden and guarded came to Jo Ellen 
as peculiarly pathetic. She saw an eternity of cautions. 
It was a relief that her mother’s transparent strategy 
should draw Uncle Ben into the kitchen, whence booming 
whispers came in token of a relaxed tension. Billy 
decided to go off to his room. Yet the privilege of speak¬ 
ing freely, now that it had come at last, appeared to 
affect Mrs. Bogert awkwardly. Her eagerness centered 
in knowing the thoughts of her granddaughter. These 
were distressingly difficult to reach. p 

“I know how it is,” said Mrs. Bogert. “Sometimes 
we just want to be let alone. I’ve been that way. * To 
feel things out. Feeling. I guess that’s deeper down 
than thinking. What’s hardest is to feel pushed. ” 

Jo Ellen nodded. 

“It all comes around to what you can find it in your 
heart to do. That’s about it.” 

“I get to wondering,” said Jo Ellen, “whether it 
is a heart thing, whether all that part hasn’t been rubbed 
out, all of it. ” 

The shrewd wrinkles around Mrs. Bogert’s eyes were 
accentuated. 

“No, my dear. Can’t be done. When we have 
nothing else to go on we get around to that. If I know 
you, you’ll be saying to yourself that you want to do 
the right thing. But if your heart doesn’t back you up, 
I wouldn't count much on what you decide. We have 
to feel our way through. You may feel ”—she put an 
arm about Jo Ellen’s shoulders—” you may feel you’re 
being crucified down there. But you have to think of 
how you would feel if you chucked Marty. No matter how 
many people we’re tied to, no matter how many we cut 
away from, we still have to live with ourselves. Some¬ 
times it’s a case of figuring out which will make us least 
miserable. That isn't being very comforting, is it? ” 


^THE OTHER HIGH PLACE 269 

Poor Grandmother! She was keenly miserable her¬ 
self, and she was being persuaded to act a false part. 
Her real wish was for rebellion. Everything she said 
sounded as if it had been said a million times before. 
Everything that anybody said must sound stale and 
mechanical. 

Even when Grandmother was murmuring, as if hoping 
to be impressive, “We take the oath—for better or 
for worse . . .” there was the old wives’ sound that 
suggested despair and the fatalistic consolations of a 
leap in the dark. 

Poor family! Trying to do this mysterious right thing, 
whatever it w^as. Hiding its hates in a conspiracy to 
be safe—to keep the form, by some miracle to hold all 
the pieces together with the glue of a gloomy kindness; 
above all, perhaps, to hold Jo Ellen’s pieces together. . . . 

When Jo Ellen went to her bed it was with a feverish 
sense of the pressure, of a tight blankness into which 
came shapes, faces, staring words, foolish dissolving 
images, streakings that were like pains made visible. 

And the whole affair was so simple. You either 
went back to the roof or you didn’t. Nothing that you 
could think or that anyone else could say might take 
away any of this awful simplicity. 

It was while she sat before her old bureau that the 
scratch came at the door. 

Uncle Ben. He was without a collar, as though he 
had started to undress for the night. He looked curi¬ 
ously big as he came. An ungainly way of dodging in, 
with a furtive glance of precaution, his lips parted and 
his eyes very wide open, gave him a blundering effect. 

Jo Ellen felt no surprise, no curiosity. She looked 
at him without a flicker. There seemed to be no room 
in her for any new emotion. Nothing that could follow 
her into the innermost places would any longer be 
astonishing or even irritating. It was all part of this 
simple thing that stood up before you like a gate— 


270 


JO ELLEN 


or perhaps like an iron door. And Uncle Ben had to be 
heard. He had to unload whatever was behind this 
look of his. They would all keep on piling up around 
you things you would have to climb over . . . 

“You don’t mind my saying something, Jo Ellen?” 

As though he had never said a word! 

“I told you this wasn’t like Marty—that you couldn’t 
tell how it might happen—to any man—no matter 
where he was—that you couldn’t say by what came out 
of it how bad he was. I can’t be sure you get that. 
It makes a difference—if you can get it. See? If you 
can get it how a temptation—yes, a temptation—will 
sneak up on him or suddenly be right there, soft and 
easy looking—not looking wicked—and him not feeling 
like a bad man at all—not being a bad man at all. Then 
the punishment hits him like a ton of brick. I know— 
sounds like old stuff. It is old stuff. So’s being unhappy. 
Say-” 

Bogert pulled open his shirt and thrust forward a 
shoulder under the light. 

“Look at that!” 

She saw the brown hieroglyph in the flesh. 

“Teeth!” 

His rasping whisper might have been supposed to 
sum up all that needed to be said. But he went on. 

“I never was bad. Not bad. I can say that. I 
know. We know about ourselves. Other people make 
a guess. We know just how it has been with us. I 
was with a girl; not thinking of anything but her. 
Spooning. I was sure we would be married. I hadn’t 
asked her. We were drifting along—drifting. I thought 
she was—she was a wonderful sort of girl. She had me. 
Then the wild animal broke in—the rotten beast who 
was her husband. It wasn’t a badger game or anything 
like that. She thought he was in Chicago and that 
she’d never see him again. She told me that afterward. 
I’ve always believed her. Anyway, there was the beast. 



THE OTHER HIGH PLACE 


271 


We wrecked the place between us. There were no rules. 
Not a rule. The bite in the shoulder was the worst for 
me. That was a nasty one. I wasn’t satisfied until I 
made sure that if he ever bit anybody again it w T ould 
be with store teeth. I was sorry for one thing. She 
hit him with a chair. ” 

Bogert drew a deep breath of reminiscence, and 
stood wavering. 

“By that time we were pretty bloody. It was fear¬ 
ful. One of us might have been killed-” 

He shook a paw at Jo Ellen. 

“One of us might have been crippled for life. About 
a girl. If it had been me, I wouldn’t have got much 
sympathy, would I? Fooling with another man’s 
wife. Served me right—that’s what they’d say. They’d 
have pointed me out as a dirty hound who hunted 
women. Sure thing. I wouldn’t have had a show. 
Well—” Bogert appeared to be bewildered by his own 
outburst. His face was crimsoned as with a shame. 
“There it is. That was me. What I’m telling you is, 
how do we know about Marty? You can’t feel the way 
I do. You’re a girl. You can’t see how it might be— 
how he might have got in for it . . . with a crazy 
man. We don’t know about the girl. You don’t expect 
him to accuse the girl. I don’t say how it was. Maybe 
she was all right at that. We don’t know. But we know 
what he got, and, by God! it was enough! That’s 
what I’m saying—it’s enough. We don’t need to put 
on any more. Not a damned bit more. ” 

Jo Ellen stood up. Bogert was able to see how the 
hand that touched the bureau was trembling. He made 
a movement as if to reach for her, and was arrested by 
some second consideration; perhaps by the fact that 
save for the quavering hand, she did not move. In 
another instant he was stealing out, closing the door 
without a click. 

She stood for a long time, quite still, staring at the 




272 


JO ELLEN 


door knob. Her breathing seemed to be affected by 
an immense and painful compassion. When she shut 
her eyes new streaks of ugliness had intruded. It was 
a pity there had to be the blood on Uncle Ben. 

v 

She would not have said, in the morning, that she 
had made up her mind. It was impossible to believe 
that any such process had proceeded. She knew only 
that at the end of the day she would turn downtown. 
A decision of any sort, even a desperate decision, would 
have had a lift in it. This was not like a decision. It 
was like a yielding, a kind of blind acceptance, that 
carried no glory of resolution. Perhaps it was more 
like looking beyond, as at a road, and seeing yourself 
moving there without having said to yourself or to 
any other that you would go that way. You found the 
act beginning to happen. It had begun to happen when 
you saw yourself on the road. That was all. 

In the same way the day’s work had an inevitable 
cast. It seemed inevitable that Cannerton should come 
in, and that he should be not only sober but solemn. 
He had a piece of typewriting which he asked her to put 
with the other papers she was to place under Eberly’s 
eye. Cannerton, despite his cynical wisdom, appeared 
to have a theory that Eberly’s eye had receptive, or at 
least weak, moments when a proper strategy might 
seize an advantage. The innocent expectation was that 
Jo Ellen would use this strategy. 

When it was too late Jo Ellen knew that Eberly’s 
mood had swerved quite out of human reach, and that 
this was not one of the days on which table tactics 
could be applied with any hope. 

Since it was one of her own bad days she was drawn 
up harshly when he lifted the Cannerton papers, with 
the bluish slip on top, and glared at her. 

“Did anybody speak to you about this?’’ 


THE OTHER HIGH PLACE 


273 


“Yes,” she said. 

“That was a mistake on your part. I can't be worked. 
You ought to know that by this time. Your job isn’t 
to practice tricks in the interest of anybody who wants 
to put over something.” 

“I didn’t think it was a trick,” Jo Ellen retorted. 

“I don’t care what you call it. He knew it was a 
trick and you let him make you a partner in it. You’re 
not supposed to be his partner here.” 

“But—I hope you don’t believe I knew what it was.” 

“Then it should have had your notation—that 
something was added—anything to show that there 
was no pussyfooting and that you were my secretary!” 

“I’m sorry,” said Jo Ellen with a furious brevity. 

“I hope you are.” Eberly snapped the papers into 
the wire basket. “I hope I sha’n’thave to feel that 
traps are being laid. I hope you’ll get it into your 
head that they’ll try to work you. Naturally. Why 
shouldn’t they?—if they found you could be worked— 
and I let you work me?” 

“If you find me unsatisfactory-” Jo Ellen began. 

Eberly waved his hand. “I find you young. When 
you are young you have to let age snarl at you. Calling 
you young is not a criticism, or even a comment. It 
is a statement of fact. I want you young. But I must 
retain the privilege of informing your youth, at appro¬ 
priate times and in appropriate ways.” 

“I don’t think-” 

“You don’t think the appropriateness is beyond 
question. Perhaps it isn’t. The point is, that the 
question is one I must decide. And the subject of our 
little discussion is not my inappropriateness but yours. 
If you understand that, we’re through. ” 

Jo Ellen stiffened. “Through-?” 

“ Through discussing. ” 

“I thought you were firing me,” Jo Ellen remarked 
coolly. But her face reddened. 





274 


JO ELLEN 


“No,” said Eberly. “You may not have all wisdom, 
but you’ll be quite clever enough to know you’re being 
fired if that should ever happen here. Don’t let us 
talk about anything so disagreeable—assuming that it 
would be as unpleasant to you as it would be to me. 
I hope it would. I like to think you’re interested—and 
that your interest will never be divided. That’s what 
I was getting at. If you want to be good to me you 
won’t tell me how this happened. I don’t want to know. ” 

“Even if I wasn't working you?” 

Eberly paused long enough to look at her for the 
first time. His eyes seemed to be occupied chiefly, 
in that instant, with her hair, as if he had never suffi¬ 
ciently observed its color. 

“You have certain qualities”—after the glance he 
might have meant decorative qualities—“that I admire 
too much to test in argument.” He got up and took 
his hat from the rack. “Don’t let them work you.” 

The incident was disagreeable chiefly for the specu¬ 
lations it kindled, and these became formidable at the 
hour of leaving the office. Going downtown was a crisis 
in itself. Carrying the echoes of the talk filled the depar¬ 
ture with a special confusion. A few words one way or 
the other, and she might have been leaving the office 
for the last time ... No. She would, probably, have 
been there until Friday. If he had taken her up when 
she said “unsatisfactory, ” this part of the great adventure 
would have been over. If something in Eberly’s manner 
hadn’t turned a fire extinguisher on her flames, this 
particular job would have burned up. Eberly was wrong. 
She was sure of that. Seemingly a boss could be wrong 
and get away with it; because he was boss. Uncle 
Ben would have quoted the old one: that he did it for 
the reason the blacksmith licked the parson—because 
he wanted to and because he could. There were other 
bosses. No trouble about another job. But the thing 
was a knifish reminder of how it would feel to be going 


THE OTHER HIGH PLACE 


275 


downtown with no office to return to ... to have 
but one job, in a cage . . . like so many other women. 
One job, fenced in, day after day. 

People got used to such things, the way they got used 
to crowds like this one on the way to the elevated. 
Most of these people seemed to be driven by something. 
To get home. A good many of them wouldn’t care much 
for home after they got there. But they were driven. 
Perhaps they made one another hurry ... or there 
might be something behind them that they didn’t like. 

In the tangle at Sixth Avenue an elbow jostled her. 
Almost at the same moment a voice said, “Sorry!” 

He was a good-looking yoimg man—but he could 
not look. She knew at once that he was blind. Yet he 
had a peaceful, unworried face. It was odd to discover 
how tranquil he was in the midst of the scuffle. 

“Are you going to take a Sixth Avenue car?” 

He appeared to know that she hadn’t moved away, 
perhaps that she was still peering at him. 

“No,” she faltered. 

“I wonder,” he said “—I wonder if you’d put me on 
a Sixth Avenue, going uptown. ” 

“Certainly I will,” Jo Ellen returned, and took hold 
of his arm. He was quite assured. The uproar of the 
traffic left no sign upon him. He and Jo Ellen might 
have been moving in a garden path. 

Waiting at the curb, Jo Ellen ventured to ask, “Was 
it the war?” 

He shook his head, without solemnity. “No, a cross 
circuit—live wire. ” 

They moved when the traffic policeman’s hand went 
high. As the car drew up, a huge woman pushed her 
way in front of them, lunging violently. Two men who 
undertook a similar maneuver encountered Jo Ellen’s 
arm. The blind man, finding the step, smiled cheerfully. 

“Thank you very much,” he said. 

It was like throwing him to the lions. . . . 


276 


JO ELLEN 


On the elevated Jo Ellen saw that a vast tent of 
purple was drawing over the eastern sky while a gorgeous 
crimson held the west. The splendor flashed through 
the transverse clefts of the city. Forty-first, fortieth, 
thirty-ninth, thirty-eighth—each street had its own 
sunset. At her downtown station she knew that the 
crimson line had shrunk to a golden slit and that a 
darkness, quick and threatening, was filling the caverns. 
The storm broke with a crash while she was descending 
the station steps, an amazing deluge, as of resources 
that should have been showered but that were being 
spilled in bulk. Lurid sheets of rain slithered across 
the steeple of Trinity and spun among the grave stones. 
The towers were blotted out at the top. The wet roar 
punctuated by the drumming of thunder, and the sudden 
torrent between the curbs, racing down the slope from 
Broadway in fantastic volume, had the effect of a disaster 
that must somehow destroy. 

“Sort of a cloud-burst,” remarked the boy who was 
hesitating on an upper step as Jo Ellen climbed to the 
shelter of the station. 

If the clouds had burst, they burst again. Only the 
ghost of a city seemed to be shivering behind the gray 
swirls. Figures that had been flattened in doorways 
scudded for better shelter. A single taxicab, in water to 
the hubs, moved in a drunken line. Its horn gurgled 
like a drowning throat. 

“Guess we’ll have to swim,” added the boy, pulling 
down his cap. 

Jo Ellen looked resentfully into the darkening uproar. 
Only a little over a hundred yards to her objective. 
It was absurd to be marooned so short a distance from 
the end of the journey. She was not very good at waiting. 
But you couldn’t bully a storm into giving you room to 
run. If there was even a partial pause she would run. 
Perhaps there was a pause, though it might have been 
in the noise only, and she leaped down the steps and up 


THE OTHER HIGH PLACE 


277 


the slope toward Broadway—a swift dash, with head 
down. The eddies of rain wrapped her, drenched her 
stockings, beat down her neck, slapped her bent face 
until she had to slow down for breath. Her skirt, 
cold and stringy, clung to her legs like a shrunken bathing 
suit. . . . And here at last was the door, with awed men 
and girls huddled in the hallway, and Mike, the elevator 
starter, saying, “Holy Mother! But you got it good!” 
Tommy, running her up, had an oblique grin for her 
condition. “As if you fell in,” he said. 

Back at the roof door, her face dripping. 

VI 

“O Jo Ellen!” 

Marty, with a red look, excited, clutching at her 
wetness, pulling her down to meet his raised lips. . . . 

Kissing him. Leaving rain on his smoky face. She 
shivered and hurried to rid herself of the clothes. He 
wanted to help, and rolled away after towels. 

“Mother’s laid up,” he said. “A cold, or something.” 

Mrs. Gorman, the chief of the cleaning women, was 
cooking dinner. There was a smell of onions. Jo Ellen 
detested the smell of onions. The smell came with a 
special sharpness after an open-air bath. 

Marty intruded with clumsy efforts at assistance. 

“I’ve got you towels,” he repeated. 

He wanted to touch her body. She shivered again. 

“You’re chilled up,” he said. “I’ll get you a little 
whisky. ” 

“No.” She made it clear that she didn’t want 
whisky. Whisky made her think of the way his face 
looked. She knew by this time that some one in the 
building w'as enabling him to secrete a bottle of his 
own, to be quite independent of the parental supply. 

The excoriating ordeal was going into his mother’s 
bedroom. The thing had to be done. To show a decent 
interest. 


278 


JO ELLEN 


Mrs. Simms had the effect of having listened. Her hard¬ 
ness was harder in bed. The glance cut clean through. 

“I hope youTe feeling better,” said Jo Ellen. 

“I’m not.” 

“Have you had the doctor?” 

“No.” 

“Don’t you think we ought to call him?” 

“You’re very much interested all of a sudden.” 

“I didn’t know-” 

“How could you? Gallivanting. I’d rather you 
didn’t pretend.” 

“But Mother Simms-” 

“Save yourself. I’ve got help.” 

Being hated—it hurt to be hated. Probably that 
part couldn’t be changed. If she gave up everything 
to be a house drudge, Jo Ellen was sure that she would 
only be hated differently. Probably the most awful 
hates were of people who lived together closely, hour 
after hour, day after day. There were stories of people 
penned together, on an island, or in a prison, who began 
as real friends and ended as haters. Marty, watching 
her, and getting ready to say something, was just now 
not busy hating. He was waiting for the opportunity 
to speak of L T ncle Ben and all that lay bare since he saw 
her. But something was growing in him. Something 
was growing in her. What was it? It couldn’t be 
like the thing that grew in Mrs. Simms. Not hate. 
That was horrible. The closing-in thing that enveloped 
you like the storm. 

The storm, which she had forgotten to hear, must 
have spent itself at last. The street rivers would be 
ebbing in the dark. 

Simms senior greeted her with an obvious effort to 
seem the same as usual. He knew of Uncle Ben. The 
three sat at table. Mrs. Gorman brought in the onion- 
flavored steak, and fussed with the arrangement of 
something on a tray for Mrs. Simms. 




THE OTHER HIGH PLACE 


279 


Martv spoke about the extraordinary way the storm 
came up, straight over Long Island, or say from the 
Sound. It was a whopper. And Jo Ellen was soaked. 

‘‘Too bad,” said the father. 

Presently Daniel Simms was talking about an old 
actor who had died. He expected Jo Ellen to be interested 
in anything about the stage. It was a pity, he thought, 
that they didn't have plays like “Squatter Sovereignty'’ 
any more. And there was Hoyt’s “Brass Monkey.” 
When he was a youngster they had a lot of plays like 
that with real fun in them. Not stuff like they had now. 
Good clean fun. The first shows he ever went to were 
at Tony Pastor's. He remembered Lillian Russell when 
she was the queen of the bunch. A great girl, Lillian. 
And there was Lester Wallack and old man Sothern. For 
that matter, there was Booth, and Salvini. But Ned Har- 
rigan—“O boy!” exclaimed Simms. “He was the one!” 

Jo Ellen said she had met a nice old man—he was now 
a doorkeeper—who told her he had acted with Harrigan. 

“Is that so?” 

Mrs. Simms's sharp voice reminded Mrs. Gorman of 
a forgotten element of her meal. 

His mother's voice produced a twitch in Marty as if 
by a hidden wiring. Jo Ellen saw how the enthusiasm 
for his food gave place now and again to thought of 
the speech he must make later on. The alternation 
produced a confusion in his throat. His uneasiness was 
pitiful. The father’s uneasiness had another cast. 

After dinner Arnold Pearson came. His seemed the 
only face that did not threaten—unless you considered 
Mrs. Gorman. He would not advise, or dodge, or explain. 
He brought out a little package from his pocket. 

“Strings!” exclaimed Marty. 

Marty had taken up Arnold’s suggestion about the 
violin. A glance toward his mother’s bedroom indicated 
a moment’s debate. No, not now. He fingered the 
strings nervously. “A set. I only needed the E.” 


280 


JO ELLEN 


“Might as well have the outfit,” said Arnold cheerily. 

“Good idea,” nodded Daniel Simms. “The old 
fiddle’s sort of been out of it. ” 

Jo Ellen wondered whether Arnold now knew that 
she knew. She could understand, as she had not been 
able to understand, the meaning of the look he always 
gave her at the first of a meeting. It was always, too, 
a look that did not last. If it was a guiltiness in sharing 
a concealment, it gave place to a franker look—a wishing 
look, you might say. There was something radiantly 
honest about him. Wherever his thought might wander, 
she was sure it came back to a good wish for the situation. 

“How’s business?” Daniel Simms asked. 

“Big. We can’t fill half the orders. How’s your 
business?” Arnold asked Jo Ellen earnestly. 

“Her people fill seats,” laughed Simms. 

“They seem to think they’re filling very well,” Jo 
Ellen added with an effort toward lightness. 

No subject had a long life. Perhaps Arnold felt the 
special impediment. Perhaps he always felt an impedi¬ 
ment at the beginning and was longer than usual to¬ 
night in getting it out of the way, because it was accom¬ 
panied by new weight. It became painful to be conscious 
of his struggle. It would be a relief to have him go. 
Yet Jo Ellen had a dull dread of the time when he should 
go, and when Daniel Simms should be off to his club. 
Dreading strengthened her resolve to refuse a scene. 

When the time came, when Arnold had chosen to go 
away with Simms, and Marty had withheld the signal 
that might have been a restraint, Jo Ellen realized that 
the dread had gone with him. Left alone with Marty, and 
freed, for the time, of his mother, it was suddenly clear 
that her suffering had carried her past the merely 
awkward place. The big calamity ^remained, but she 
was sure she could handle scenes. Coming back was 
accepting the big calamity. You had to take what 
went with it. 


THE OTHER HIGH PLACE 


281 


Marty had worked it out like something maudlin 
in a book. He wanted to cast himself at her feet or cry 
on her shoulder. He had dramatized a spectacular 
contrition, and the confession of the erring being com¬ 
pleted, pity and an eternal bond were to do the rest. 

She did pity him. It was immensely sad to see him 
watch the closing of the door, then turn to the measur¬ 
ing of his chances w r ith her. There was nothing left of 
him to inspire anything but pity. It might have been 
that he could make a sin look small by the presence of a 
chastened strength. Perhaps it was true that the strong 
did not have sins, but only follies. It was pitiful that sins 
should so often get their label from the outward conse¬ 
quence. The crushed had no benefit of the doubt. If 
there was consequence there was sin. Then came the 
added collective consequences. If your direct punish¬ 
ment hurt others also, the others had their reasonable 
complaint. The sin took on the dimensions of all the 
effects. Uncle Ben had said it: Nothing more should be 
piled on. The argument was excellent. 

In their room she stood behind his chair and spoke 
quietly. She tried to fancy herself as a mature woman 
addressing an injured child; or if not that, at least as 
a woman in the presence of a lesser strength. 

“Uncle Ben has told me everything-” she began. 

Marty would not have it this way. He wrenched the 
chair around and seized her. 

“Look here! I told him—yes. But I got to tell you. 
How do I know—? Listen! I-” 

“You haven’t got to tell me. That was your affair-” 

This caught in her throat, but she went on. “What 
you did before you married me—how can I go into that? 
How can any woman do that? But after you married me 
—you were hurt after you married me. I don’t take 
back anything. The way things are—that’s what we 
have to go on. The way they are. We have to make 
the best of it. The best—don’t you see? We can’t 





282 


JO ELLEN 


do anything with what happened before. No use going 
into what happened before. We don’t need to make 
it any harder. If you-” 

He began to sob and to make patting motions with 
the hands that held her. 

“O Jo Ellen!” 

“Our living together is our affair now, and-” 

“You mean it isn’t Mother’s?” 

“Or my mother’s,” Jo Ellen returned firmly. 

“You’re right, Jo Ellen. You’re right. You’re 
wonderful!” 

“No, I’m not wonderful. I’m a pretty cheap imitation 
of anything wonderful. I’m only-” 

The crisp call pierced the closed door. 

“I’ll see what she wants,” said Jo Ellen. She hurried 
to Mrs. Simms’s room, and met the eyes that seemed 
to be reaching far forward like prongs. 

“A glass of water, please.” 

Why did it make Jo Ellen’s heart beat violently to 
go after the glass of water? Were hearts good at 
guessing? 

A gesture directed the placing of the glass on the 
table beside the bed. 

“If you’re slamming him,” said Mrs. Simms, “you’d 
better understand-” 

“I’m not slamming him.” 

“ I don’t know what you’d call it. Your uncle pumping 
him, and now you here full of it. You people may think 
you can jump on him. I won’t have it. You might as 
well understand that.” 

Jo Ellen set her teeth. “You’re jumping on me.” 

“I’m standing up for him. His father won’t see 
anything. He won’t see that the poor wretch is being 
hounded. ” 

“I was only saying ...” Jo Ellen gulped down 
the hot words she didn’t want. “I was only saying 
that we must work it out—together.” 






THE OTHER HIGH PLACE 


283 


“I knew you were lecturing him. A mother gets 
things like that. I knew it. Telling him where he gets 
off. Exactly. Just what would make it nice and com¬ 
fortable for you. Exactly. ” 

Jo Ellen quivered. If you said a certain sort of word 
everything would come to an end. You had to think 
of that. A braid of Mrs. Simms’s thin hair, terminating 
in a sharp wisp, lay straight out on the pillow. You 
could take hold of that and pull her out of bed, then 
stand over her and tell her where she got off. But 
people who were in bed weren’t treated that way. It 
couldn’t be done. Nothing could be done. You had 
to keep on letting thoughts like that tear around inside 
of you, until your insides were sore, and do nothing. . . . 

“What did she want?” asked Marty. 

“A drink of water.” 

He was not satisfied. “Did she say—anything?” 

“She said I was not to lecture you.” 

He gaped at her tears . . . and watched her throw 
herself face downward on the bed. 

VII 

Mrs. Simms was better in the morning. 

Marty looked from one to the other of the two who 
had wrestled the night before. This looking from 
one to the other had become a habit. Jo Ellen wondered 
whether Mrs. Simms had noticed it. Mrs. Simms never 
appeared to notice anything, but much was to be deduced 
from her faculty for knowing things. If she knew that 
Marty watched them both, what did she think it meant? 
Did she know how much Marty drank? What sort of 
talk went on between them when Jo Ellen was not there? 

In the evening Marty tuned up his violin, twisting 
the little pegs, with a flushed face. This meant that 
Jo Ellen was to attempt accompaniments on the old, 
frightfully-out-of~tune piano. A man in a wheel chair 
might have been a good musician. There were a hundred 


284 


JO ELLEN 


fine things a man might do in a wheel chair. . . . He 
might really have kept his father’s books as he had 
promised. ... Jo Ellen remembered a man in a wheel 
chair behind the counter of a little jeweler’s shop, a 
man with an extraordinarily radiant smile and eyes 
that made you understand that all poets do not write 
poetry. This man’s poems were hammered out, filed 
and twisted into exquisite whimsies of gemmed metal, 
into necklaces that had a music, into rings over w T hich 
he hovered as if all were somehow to be worn by the 
One Girl. He was indeed, a surprisingly sunny man. 
The sun in him seemed to have broken through a tempest. 
It shone on the trinkets. You couldn’t tell whether 
the light came from them or from him. He loved the 
things so much you almost dreaded to buy them. It 
was as if you might be inflicting a kind of bereavement. 
Yet he had a w T ay of appearing to decide that you could 
be trusted with the treasures—you, in particular. . . . 

Marty plucked the strings thickly. And w T hen he 
began to play the note was his thin, uncertain note. 
The Intermezzo. And The Evening Star. Jo Ellen, 
with her back to him, felt the thin wail writhing its way 
to her nerves. A taut silk thread drawn back and forth 
over the skin could soon show blood. These sounds 
rasped with a persistence that was delicately horrible. 
The sheets before her squirmed and blurred. Her 
fingers fumbled. 

“You’ll have to practice up,” suggested Marty, 
struggling again with the pegs. 

“You need a little practice yourself,” added Daniel 
Simms from behind his evening paper. 

“Of course,” said Marty. “I’ll have to get it out 
to-morrow. ” 

“I couldn’t stand much of it,” remarked Mrs. Simms. 

“Oh!”—Marty blinked at his mother. He went on 
defiantly, with a sullen expression. 

The next piece broke down in the middle. 


THE OTHER HIGH PLACE 


285 


“Why don’t you try something with a little life in 
it?” demanded Daniel Simms. “Makes me think of a 
funeral. ” 

“You’re not very encouraging,” said Mrs. Simms. 
Simms chuckled, and bit at his cigar. “You’re not 
so damned encouraging yourself, mother.” 

Jo Ellen braced herself. “Why not try this-?” 

But Marty was putting away the violin, with no 
further word. His acrid silence might have implied 
that everybody was turning on him. In the interval 
before bedtime he contrived to console himself with 
whisky. The exhaled fumes were easily to be detected 
in their room. This odor had not been sickening at 
Amy Lenning’s party. Here it was like the smell of 
a soul rotting. 

Marty breathed guiltily. 

“I wish you wouldn't drink that stuff,” said Jo Ellen 
quietly, though she regarded him with a kind of terror. 

“O now!” He swung his head. “What’s a drink?” 
He was remembering that she had been game about 
the music. “What’s a drink once in a while? A drink. 
What life do I have? You don’t think of that. Nobody 
does. ” 

“Your once in a while is getting to be pretty often.” 

He stared at her with a twisted grin. “Careful now! 
You’ll be lecturing me!” Nevertheless, her eyes per¬ 
plexed him. “What do you think about when you look 
that way?” It was plain that this question had been 
hanging in his mind. 

Her imagination took a sheer leap. “Suppose I said 
I was thinking about the high place?” 

“The high place?” It was a gasp. She had jolted 
him for the moment. She could see him groping out 
of the whisky fumes, back through the crazy tangle to 
the clear open height. She saw him wince and waver, 
and she was traversing spaces herself. 

“I didn't have a chance.” This was with a relaxed 



286 JO ELLEN 

bitterness, a mere whine. “You know I didn’t. Cards 
stacked against me. ” 

“Chance?” She wanted to hold his mind, perhaps to 
drag it free, to make him look squarely at all that might 
be salvaged. It was like asking him to walk again. 
“You could do a lot with your life ...” He listened, 
with his soiled brown tie in his hand, while she pleaded. 
What she said might have seemed to offer features of 
curious and rather remote interest. He was disposed 
to let her go on. She was wonderful. But he couldn’t 
think of the right answer. No use making her flare up. 

Presently he resumed his going-to-bed ritual. 

Jo Ellen loosened her hair. The room suddenly seemed 
horribly small. . . . Like a cell. But in a cell you were 
alone. . . . No, there were cell mates sometimes. Two 
in a cell. They would get to know each other frightfully. 
Locked in together. For better or for worse. They 
could plan an escape if they wanted to. When they got 
out they could run in opposite directions, for safety, 
and so that each would have his freedom alone. To 
be free. That would be the ultimate thrill. . . . But 
they would have to plan together. They must both have 
a strong, conquering hunger for freedom. If only one 
of them had this hunger it would be very hard to do 
anything. 

Suppose that each night the room got to seem smaller 
and smaller, as in the gruesome story. The cell mate 
might not notice this at all. It would be a thing you 
might not tell him. To admit it, even to yourself, 
would make you sure that something was happening 
in your brain. If the thing kept up, you would be com¬ 
pelled . . . O yes! If you could get out you would run 
away at last. 

She heard a ship’s whistle, deep, as from the chest 
of a sea giant, booming through the treble yelpings of 
the little boats like a voice that knew it did not have 
to be raised. This would be a great liner. It did not 


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287 


shout or ask. It simply said, “I come!” On such a 
ship you could travel to a farthest freedom. If you ran 
to Inwood, and to an office and back again to ... to a 
cell, scurrying stupidly, like an ant who had wandered 
into a tight place, and you came to the screaming point, 
the point where you saw white and red, and the pain of 
not saying and not doing cut into the marrow of you—- 
what then? 

Marty, with dangling legs, found his freedom in a 
bottle. 

At this moment he was staring, his lips loose. . . . 
Staring, at what? If he noticed that deep voice of the 
ship, what did it make him think of? He had been away 
and had come back. His dreams would carry him again 
through the Narrows, over the squirming water, straight 
to the place where everything was sharpened into the 
one thing that crashed . . . you could not dream your 
way out of that very well. You would keep on making 
the same journey. That would be a terror. To be 
carried again and again to the one unspeakable place . . . 

“I was thinking,” he said, “we might get Arnold 
to buy us one of those little roulette outfits.” 

And he resumed his stare, this time at the utterly 
incomprehensible stoniness of her face. 

VIII 

Morning at the office. Aaron coming in very late. 
Mrs. Pinney, angry, trying the transfixing power of 
the human eye. He was an irritating boy. 

“I wonder what you were doing last night.” 

Aaron turned to the fight page of the morning paper. 
“Only a little petting party.” 

“You snipe!” hissed Mrs. Pinney. 

Aaron refused to be withered. As it turned out, 
this became one of his busy days. There were a great 
many callers. Mrs. Pinney had a well-secreted admi¬ 
ration for Aaron’s efficiency in such crises. 


288 


JO ELLEN 


Cannerton was among the many who did not reach 
Eberly. He found an opportunity to say to Jo Ellen: 
“Your friend Cora Vance is a shade anxious about you. ” 
“ Sorry, ” said Jo Ellen. She wished to see Cora Vance. 
It was not a comfortable wish. The feeling translated 
by Cannerton as an anxiety was likely to be complicated. 
Cora Vance might be anxious, but she was certain to be 
something else also. Something else had sounded in her 
voice when she said Stan was a fast worker. Something 
else looked out of her eyes, too. How would you feel 
to see a man who had been your husband going away 
with another? You might have stopped loving him, 
and might have decided that you no longer cared at all 
what he did, whom he knew, or what he was to them. 
And yet . . . Above everything, it w-ould make a dif¬ 
ference if you liked another girl, had a strong feeling 
(she really had showm a strong feeling) of friendliness 
for her, and then saw the man wdio had been your 
husband standing close, and the tw T o slipping aw r ay 
late at night. Until she told Cora Vance something 
more than she had told her, Jo Ellen knew that she 
would herself feel unfair. The notion of not telling 
that you were married was rather foolish. Nobody 
cared a whoop wdiether you w-ere married or not. Yet 
telling Cora that she w T as the pitiable creature of that 
story—the wife w r ho didn’t know—that w r ould be pretty 
rough. Anybody might know quite easily—Emma 
Traub or any other. The awkward thing was that 
Cora’s blunder—if you wanted to call it that—made 
telling her now something quite unlike any other way of 
telling. They would both feel the lastingness of that 
thing that happened when the cocktail tray was coming. 
Of course, Cora might get the connecting link at any 
moment. Suppose Cora had any words with Stan. 
That might settle the thing. But it would look silly 
that Jo Ellen had sat there without sense enough to do 
anything more than swallow cocktails. There was a 


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289 


reason for not crying out, “I’m the wife!” You had to 
hold on to yourself. If you’d begun admitting you’d have 
gone to pieces, right there at the party. Being impul¬ 
sive was all right for people who didn’t have terrific 
impulses. . . . 

“Why, you almost look anxious yourself,” said Can- 
nerton, “and I hope it may not be considered impertinent 
to remark that anxiety does not fit you. If I saw you 
really looking anxious I’d say, right off the bat—miscast. 
No, you’re for something with a devilish dash in it, 
superbly young, but nothing flapperish—nothing like 
a flapper. You wouldn’t do for a flapper at all. Maybe 
a kind of heroic ingenue —I could do it—I could write 
a part that would fit you like a ten-dollar silk stocking, 
a part that-” 

The buzzer terminated the intrusion. 

It occurred to Jo Ellen, while Eberly was droning, 
that the look Cannerton pretended to see might really 
be there. Probably there were people who could examine 
your face and read everything. Could such people see 
that you had stared into the dark of a cell?—that you 
went out, except on awful Sundays, to take exercise in 
the Place of the White Lights, and then dragged yourself 
back again into the cell to dream furiously? Could 
they see which of your wishes was the cowardly wish 
and which was the brave one—if all were not cowardly? 
Could they read what it was that made you stick? 
Was it cowardly to stick, or would the cowardly thing 
be the thing you put off, that came into your head 
when you had one of those staring dreams—in the dark 
or in some uproar? Were you to be dogged indefinitely 
by thoughts like these, wherever you went, whatever 
you were doing? Was your type machine to keep on 
stabbing you with the sound of such thoughts? Was 
Eberly to keep on looking as if he knew, and as if he 
withheld his rage with an effort that whitened his gills 
and gave his voice the refined attrition of a file? Was 



290 


JO ELLEN 


Shaffer to keep on seeming sarcastic when he talked 
about the wonder of his wife? People who were ab¬ 
solutely contented should have the decency to be quiet 
about it. Nothing objectionable in their being contented, 
but why confide the condition? Especially people like 
Shaffer. Was it a sign that you were wrong that Shaffer 
should be so irritating? What would a person like Shaffer 
say if he knew everything? For that matter, what would 
Eberly say? Eberly—that would be stupendous, 
listening to Eberly. 

And then you knew that all of these thoughts came 
tearing back to yourself. They never really got outside 
of yourself. ; You were alone. You didn’t tell anybody. 
You couldn’t. It wouldn’t do any good. If they had 
an opinion it wouldn’t do any good. You had heard 
opinions already. These changed nothing. You might 
have told Cora Vance, for heaven knows what reason, 
but Cora Vance had gone to Chicago with a company. 
This information was dropped by Miss Farrand whom 
Jo Ellen saw some days later at a rehearsal. The rehearsal 
was in an unrented loft with dirty gray walls in which 
the voices echoed fantastically. The lines of the play— 
or of one scene in one act of a play, hammered over and 
over—were like some insane make-believe. . . . Well, 
real things weren’t any better. You had been after 
something real and you had it. Perhaps the disagreeable 
fellow who was taking the part of a preacher had a true 
line. He said something about God arranging the game 
for his own purposes. But if this was true what was 
the use of anything? You weren’t any better off than 
one of Tony Sarg’s puppets, pulled around by strings. 
All the same, perhaps that was the way it was. Perhaps 
the great Stage Manager knew what he was doing. 
Perhaps this was why Stan Lamar came into the place, 
though that seemed as crazy a bit of chance as anything 
you could think of. Perhaps God knew beforehand that 
Stan would find you, with a surprise that could not have 


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291 


been counterfeited, and would ask you to go to lunch, 
and that you would go, hoping, above all, for something 
unreal—not unreal like a play, but unreal as to the way 
everything was happening around you. 

Gamby’s was real, and the menu card, with all the 
food in the universe catalogued upon it, was a depress¬ 
ing reality when you weren’t hungry. There was a 
vigorous reality in Stan, who seemed peculiarly elated 
about something that was held back, like so much of 
him of which you only had glimpses. Presently he came 
out with it, this something that was giving him an 
excitement—or seeming to come out with it. They 
wanted him to make a trip to South America. There 
were to be huge new theaters at Caracas, at Rio, and at 
Buenos Aires. He had always wanted to see South 
America. A big deal was giving him the opportunity. 
In a few weeks everything would be ready. 

“I should think you’d like that,” said Jo Ellen. She 
was silently repeating the names. They sounded far. 
And she was hearing the deep booming of the night 
whistle from the river. 

“I do,” he said. “I’ve always wanted to get into 
the Spanish countries, to see something more than 
Mexico. I like the idea. I’m stuck on it. Good con¬ 
tracts. Backed by a lot of money. If anybody’d told 
me a year or two ago that I’d have this chance . . . Do 
you think I imagine it?—that sounds like something 
Spanish they’re playing now.” 

Jo Ellen had been conscious of the music. 

“Great orchestras down there. Rich cities. And 
scenery—look at these.” He had a batch of picture 
postcards in his pocket, and laid them out beside her 
plate. “There’s something about a Spanish city— 
they know how to live down there. Did you notice this 
one of the cafe with the funny name? I’m crazy enough 
to go, only—” He stopped short and scratched a crease 
in the tablecloth with the point of his fork. “Say-!” 



292 


JO ELLEN 


He bent his face eagerly toward her. “Will you dance? 
—just a turn or two?” 

Her hesitation lasted but an instant. It was scarcely 
a wavering. She needed an instant in which to be 
astonished and to say to herself that a dance was some¬ 
thing she wanted more than anything else in the world, 
which made being astonished seem rather strange. She 
could even ignore the possibility of his thinking that 
she threw herself into it. She wanted to throw herself 
into it, as if she were plunging overboard, without 
caring how deep the water was or how strong anybody 
thought the undertow might be. She didn’t want to 
drown, but she wanted to be enormously enveloped, 
to have the whole mess of other things shut out. Yet 
it wasn’t in the least like being overboard. It was 
more as of being gathered up by a magnificent wind— 
maybe a west wind, with a kind of considerate violence, 
and swung through an infinitude of pink mists. The 
nervous detonations of the band pounded like a thrilled 
pulse. Some cheap bit of jazz. But it had the beat and 
the shiver, the necessary sort of irresponsible swing. 

Stan Lamar could dance. He held her close, but 
the hand at her back knew how to be impersonal. He 
knew how to find clear lanes over the crowded floor, 
how to orchestrate his steps to the humors of the music. 
Jo Ellen felt his strength, his easy initiative—she 
managed, afterward, to endow him wfith amazing 
virtuosities as a dancer. In her mood of that moment 
she had an emotional gratitude for the miracle that could 
detach her, and he was incidental to the miracle. The 
total of a dance might be foolish, but it included gestures 
of guidance and protection, which, as symbolism, 
might be more grotesque than the total, yet could reveal 
not a little to the guided and protected one—when her 
thought went back. At the moment Jo Ellen had no 
philosophy, no sense of time nor of space. She, who, as 
Lot Mallin might have said, had run wdld, had danced 


THE OTHER HIGH PLACE 


293 


very little. Outer circumstances and an inner reticence 
had contrived to keep her unwearied of such simple 
poetries. Chiefly, Lamar had found the moment when 
a commonplace could be captivating, could be the one 
possible anaesthetic to a pain. 

He looked down at her. “This is why I don’t want to 
go,” he said. 

Now he became Stan Lamar; it was Stan Lamar’s 
arm that held her, his body that pressed warmly against 
her bosom. She was dancing with Cora Vance’s first 
husband. She was condoning the long kiss. She was 
whirling away from all the oppressive solicitudes of that 
home on Inwood hill. She was defying Marty Simms’s 
mother. She was insulting the wheel chair. And she 
could shut her eyes and be willing. It was like being 
drunk, piercingly drunk . . . and relaxing . . . terrifically. 

The music stopped. After the clapping of hands it 
began again, with a crash, and they went on until Jo 
Ellen’s cheeks were hot. . . . 

“Suppose you were there, too, in Rio ... on that 
balcony place ...” 

It didn’t matter what he said. Nothing quite mattered, 
except that somewhere, at the end of an enormous 
vista, sometime, in an utter pause, you would have to 
think. . . . 

At the table he was saying, “I want you to promise 
me—you know you’ve never let me 'plan to see you.” 

“I’m not very good at promising,” she said. To 
herself her voice sounded far off. 

He was not able to pin her down to a meeting. 

IX 

It might have been better to promise him something— 
to admit that they would meet and that she would 
listen to more about South America. If she had promised, 
the certainty of seeing him would not have made her 
so uneasy. The certainty of a time would have left 


294 


JO ELLEN 


a clearer space between. Going over the names of the 
places and trying to picture the geography was simply 
confusing. Europe remained vague but thinkable. 
South America was a sprawling name. You seemed to 
think of sun and sombreros and palms—chiefly palms, 
with white houses. It had a bright detachment from 
everything you knew about. Especially, it was far away. 
On any ship you would be a long time getting there. 
And when you were there the world you had lived in, 
and that had held and advised and pushed you, would 
seem quite like a world that rolled separately, by itself, 
in a clouded past. 

When she saw a bronzed man on Broadway she said 
to herself, “He has been a lot in the sun. Probably 
in South America.” 

All the world sent ambassadors to Broadway. She 
gave a new attention to foreign effects. When she ate 
in the chop suey place with Mrs. Pinney she began to 
find an exotic fascination in the gilded dragons. Airs. 
Pinney had no respect for the Chinese. “Clean,” 
she said, “but full of secret tricks. They hate us.” 
Jo Ellen managed to bring in South America. 

“Just makes me think of graft,” Mrs. Pinney said. 
“Graft and Spanishy women and bugs—that’s all I 
can think of. ” 

Mrs. Pinney had many vivid prejudices. Her idea 
of the Supreme Joke was Broadway. She liked to tell 
Jo Ellen about Broadway, meaning the contiguous 
region of it. She knew about all the Places. “On the 
second floor, the sucker, the come-on, the spender. 
In the basement, the gunman and his Moll.” She was 
an encyclopedia of scandal. She knew everybody’s 
price and everybody’s pull. The honest she passed over 
or mentioned as smug. Behind every figure was the man 
with the money, and she always knew which man. Jo 
Ellen’s skepticism as to the sinister origin of this or that 
exploitation was evidently not received as unbecoming. 


THE OTHER HIGH PLACE 


295 


“You may have a theory of temptation,” declared 
Mrs. Pinney. “I suppose every girl has. And you may 
think that you have yourself set to stand any temptation 
that comes along. That may be all right as to yourself 
or any girl you want to think well of—and I like to see 
you thinking well of people. But—now, take Lucile 
Glasson. There was Big Barney after her to go to 
dinner. She had a pretty life all laid out. She wouldn’t 
go. She may or may not have known whom Big Barney 
was serving in her case. That might have been hard 
to guess—every multimillionaire drops into Broadway 
sooner or later to look them over. What she knew was 
that she wasn’t going to begin any dinner game, even 
if paying for meals or anything else wasn’t quite easy 
for her at that particular time. And there were nice 
home folks out West, who were hoping hard that she 
would soon be able to pay back some of what she’d 
borrowed. Well, she got a letter from Big Barney 
inclosing the corner of a thousand-dollar bill and telling 
her that if she was at all interested in the rest of the 
bill he would be happy to supply it at a little dinner 
the following night. A thousand dollars for going to 
dinner at the St. Regis.” 

An old tale, new to the one who listened; and the face 
of the one who listened took on an expression—partic¬ 
ularly after that word “temptation”—which Mrs. 
Pinney had no gift for reading. 

“Did she go?” asked Jo Ellen. 

“Of course she went. That’s how she came to be 
Clark Sancher’s girl.” 

The point was, according to Mrs. Pinney, that you 
never could tell. 

“I’ve heard stories,” said Jo Ellen, “that were just 
the other way. ” 

Mrs. Pinney would have taken the position that 
stories that were just the other way weren’t news. 
A specialist in scandal has responsibilities. Moreover, 1 



296 


JO ELLEN 


not only are stories about straightness likely to be 
rather mushy, but you have to watch your step when 
you talk about the respectable. What she said to 
Jo Ellen was, “The other way. Yes. I know. But 
I'm telling you what girls are up against. I’m telling 
you what the girl who fights her way straight in the 
profession is up against—seeing a millionaire’s sweetie 
headlined in front of her.” 

Jo Ellen was not interested in Mrs. Pinney’s money 
philosophy. She was not fighting her way in the pro¬ 
fession* It might be selfish not to be worried about the 
wicked millionaires. She didn’t want a headline. ? She 
wanted . . . What was it she wanted? If some million¬ 
aire had said, “I’ll buy it for you,” what could she have 
named? Liberty? She could get the make-believe of 
that by running away. You couldn’t get liberty by 
turning your back on things. And yet, even if you knew 
this, you might have to rush out, anywhere, blindly 
at the last. There was something uncomfortable in 
Mrs. Pinney’s notion about temptation—about the final 
thing that was too much. It was this that made visions 
of South America both ugly and beautiful. 

She was feeling stifled in a home-going evening crowd, 
when she met Arnold Pearson—Arnold, who seemed to 
occupy a place entirely his own, who was always simply 
Arnold, with the frank, friendly eyes that had a way of 
gathering intentness and coming to the burning point. 
At this moment he appeared to be particularly buoyant. 
He had not before seen her alone, even in a crowd. 
Perhaps it was this fact that made him appear subdued 
after the meeting, as if he were not quite sure what he 
ought to do with the changed privilege. Jo Ellen 
was not less affected by the difference of situation. He 
was always simply Arnold, and not a problem, but to 
see him set apart from all that belonged to other meetings, 
gave him a surprising emphasis; and to be detached 
with him in this way seemed to imply something for 


THE OTHER HIGH PLACE 


297 


► 

which she was not prepared. She felt free to say any¬ 
thing to him. It occurred to her that he was the sort 
anybody would trust. Yet the quality that made her 
feel free, his utterly natural loyalty, told her all that 
she might not say. Such an allegiance could not be 
divided. He was Marty’s buddy. He and Jo Ellen 
were, both of them, sticking. . . . He would stick to 
the end of time. You could see that. No South America 
could beckon to him. . . . She reddened at this thought. 
He would be taking it for granted that she would stick— 
against all odds. He might not know what the odds 
were—not altogether. It would depend upon what 
Marty told him about the roof, and upon what he 
guessed. Maybe his wishing look had in it the hope 
that she would stick. There was an enormous sorriness 
there, too. Of this she could be sure. 

He was going downtown as far as Eighth Street. They 
rode on the elevated together. He found a seat for her, 
and bent over to say the things that might be said so 
publicly. 

When it came his time to leave her, he bent closer. 

“How’s friend husband? ’’ 

“About the same, thank you.” It sounded silly 
as she recalled it. 

He gripped her hand. “We must stand by him.” 

This seemed to leap out as if it had been held back 
too long, and when it was said he evidently felt it needed 
explaining. But there wasn’t time. The guard was 
bawling, “Let ’em off—step lively!” And he was gone. 

Very likely he had no deep meaning. It was his 
impulse to express the effect of supporting her in a 
trial. But it had the admonitory sound also. He was 
another adviser. She could not thrust away the image 
of him as one more to whom she must give an accounting. 

She imagined Arnold Pearson as hearing that she 
had run away—how those eyes of his would wince. 
And Mrs. Pinney would say . . . Oyes! Her philosophy 


298 


JO ELLEN 


about temptations would be sickeningly confirmed. 
It would be almost as horrible to support Mrs. Pinney 
as to disappoint Arnold Pearson. . . . To disappoint. 
To have the people who held you to an accounting 
watching for signs. It was a frightful thing to feel 
fenced in by expectations. You couldn’t live that way. 
You could crawl about. You could be going again to 
the roof. But you couldn’t live. You couldn’t even 
die decently. Boys died hideously in wars because 
they had to give an accounting. Women . . . they 
were supposed to know how to be whitened slowly. 

She looked over the huddle of faces in the car. There 
was a woman standing whom she hadn’t noticed—the 
sort of woman nobody notices. Jo Ellen got up to make 
a place for her. Not an old woman, but beaten looking. 
Perhaps she had been through many horrors, many 
sorts of suffering. You could read miseries in her face. 
You could ask yourself whether what you had to endure 
really counted against all that, whether you weren’t 
lucky . . . And you could stand over her and say. 
No! almost aloud, that you wouldn’t let yourself 
become like that; that you wouldn’t let life slowly 
crush you into that shape. If you had children and 
sickness and poverty, and there had been no help for 
it—well, then you would have to become like that, it 
might be, and make your accounting as bravely as 
you could to the God who must know what he is about. 
But if you came to be that way because of some horrible 
theory of enduring, because there were a certain number 
of people expecting you to stick something out, because 
some Mrs. Simms had finished her job with you, you 
would feel, when it was too late, that life had been stolen 
from you, the life that belonged to you, the life you 
thought of when you lay in the grass looking up through 
the trees, or that showed through some home window 
when you were outside and the lights were shining. . . . 

She remembered a woman holding out a gaping 


THE OTHER HIGH PLACE 


299 

handbag and screaming that her life savings had been 
stolen. Maybe the old sometimes felt like that about 
their dreams. Robbed. You had to have dreams. 
Anyway, they came. You held them. They were yours: 
dreams of splendidly real things, full of different and 
astonishing action, enormously open—not on tracks, 
and without walls, or crossing coppers, or hot, jerky 
cars that held you like poultry packed for market. 
And there would be love, love that took your hand and 
ran, ran into the wild glory of some unspoiled place, 
honestly, beautifully, fearfully green and golden, with 
vistas that gave your eyes room, and that had the smell 
of liberty. 

x 

Nevertheless, she was glad that Eberly drove her hard. 
She was glad of anything that kept her from thinking. 
Yet she could think, evidently, in spaces as thin as a 
minute, or even while she was typing and rushing about. 
She was glad that Eberly sent her here or there on foolish 
ambassadorships. He had other people, plenty of them, 
but his commissions were of many shades, and it was 
to be supposed that he had, occasionally, sane reasons 
for delegating her. Often she detected these reasons 
in questions he asked afterward. But it did not matter 
about his motives. He could do as he wanted to. His 
whims, if they were whims, brought everything to the 
sharp point. No one else could bring everything to 
the sharp point. 

It was back stage at one of the theaters, late in the 
afternoon of a musical show matinee, that she heard 
a voice cry out through the scuffle, “Jo Ellen!” 

The paint made it hard to identify Myrtle Fleck, 
and Myrtle giggled in enjoyment of the interval in 
which Jo Ellen stared. 

“Some surprise, eh?” Myrtle shrugged excitedly. 
Her shoulders were bare. A great deal of her was bare. 
An immense green plume arose from a headband of 


300 


JO ELLEN 


sparklers. The effect was duplicated in a group of 
other girls that was awaiting a signal. 

“You had me for a moment,” Jo Ellen confessed. 
“I’d say you were looking well if I could really see your 
face. How did this happen?” 

“Happen? Hear her. I just got there, that’s all.” 

Myrtle carried all the elation of having arrived. 

“Shut your trap!” 

This was a male voice, suggesting that there was too 
much noise. 

“Gawd!” remarked one of the girls standing near 
Myrtle. “They’re gettin’ worse here.” 

“I heard you were in a theatrical office,” said Myrtle. 
“By now you’ve got drag enough to get in anywhere. 
Listen, I’ll have to look you up. Wish I was going to 
see you after the show. We go on in a second.” 

“I believe you’re having a good time,” said Jo Ellen. 

Myrtle peered suspiciously through her heavily 
daubed lashes. “Sure. An awful workout, but the 
show's going big. This act has-” 

A word or gesture Jo Ellen did not catch set the group 
in scurrying motion. 

“Listen—I want to see you—” Myrtle was waving 
her white arm. 

XI 

And there was the incident of Cora Vance. It had 
to come, perhaps. Jo Ellen, after wishing to meet Cora 
again, had begun to feel that she was not eager. When 
Cora was simply Cora Vance, responding to her friend¬ 
liness was one thing. It was quite another thing, after 
all, to be chumming with Stan Lamar’s ex-wife. Nothing 
about Cora’s previous life seemed to matter, so long as 
you didn’t know about it in particular. Probably 
Cora was feeling the same way. So long as Jo Ellen 
was simply the red-haired secretary who seemed so 
different, Cora’s imagination could be enticed. But 
as somebody who had been picked up by Stan Lamar, 



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301 


who was not so absurdly innocent as she pretended— 
who was married, like anybody else, and batting around 
—she might easily appear as another consideration. 
If Jo Ellen had been told beforehand of the moment 
when the encounter was to happen, she would have 
had a dread. The incident would have stood out as one 
more example of twisted behavior in a world with St. 
Vitus’s dance. 

Cora should, indeed, have been in Chicago, but here 
she was in New York again, coming up behind Jo Ellen 
to slip an arm around her waist, and to whisper, “You 
vamp!” 

A collision between two cabs had established a block¬ 
ade. The crowd was watching the entertaining spectacle 
involved in an effort to lift a fat woman, much disarrayed, 
from the cab that lay on its side. There had been much 
discussion as to whether it would not be better to right 
the cab before removing the passenger, but the fat 
woman settled that question as soon as she could get 
her head through the door. Some one shouted, “Ladies 
first!” and the rescue proceeded. 

Then came Cora, looking charming in a tawny 
French frock. 

“Vamp” was an allusion of unmistakable origin. 
Jo Ellen deduced from the flippancy that Cora was still 
in embarrassing ignorance of any history. She flushed, 
quite as usual, and found herself grasping Cora’s hand 
with a cordial quickness. 

“There’s something I want to tell you,” she said 
abruptly. 

Cora’s eyes opened wide. “Let’s slip into the hotel.” 

They found a remote divan, and Cora lighted a 
cigarette. 

Perhaps because she had told no one else and because 
she was altogether tired of being pent, Jo Ellen told 
everything—everything that did not include South 
America. There might be reasons why telling Cora 



302 


JO ELLEN 


everything was a little crazier than telling anyone else. 
She was through with reasons. She wanted to tell. 
She told with a fervent relief that could not have been 
greater if she had been confessing the awful truth about 
a crime—if the Stan part of the story had been a guilty 
part. She did not accuse herself. She did not feel 
accused. This made the relief seem out of all proportion. 
Circumstances had retarded something that liad&to 
come out. And everything led up to Amy Lenning’s. 

Cora’s contralto emerged from the story- 

“The fool!—the damn fool!”—which was rather 
startling, until it became clear that she was speaking 
of herself. “Why—” she caught hold of Jo Ellen’s 
near hand—” it was a chance in a million—that I should 
tell you — you, the one —think of that! What a shame! 
HcU! I wouldn’t have—you see, don’t you?—it was just 
the sort of thing a person would yap about and think 
was funny, or dramatic or something. Good Lord! 
And you— you sitting there! Saying nothing. Why 
didn’t—? Of course, you were knocked clean over— 
cleanl Talk about nerve! I’d have gone up in the air. 
You sat tight and took it. ” 

“Like a stick,” said Jo Ellen with a frazzled smile. 

“Like a sport. I tell you, I’d have screamed. I 
sure would.” 

But Cora’s mind was traveling beyond that marriage 
crisis. Marty was an abstraction. 

“You poor dear!” she muttered. “And to think it 
had to be Stan!” 

“I suppose you mean-” began Jo Ellen. 

Cora pulled herself up. “O it just seemed odd. 
Stan. It’s so like him. ” 

“Maybe it’s so like me ,” said Jo Ellen defiantly. 

“No.” Cora shook her head. “But how do I know 
about you? I guess I think you're a kind of freak. 
I don’t mean anything—anything insulting. I’m 
trying to imagine how I would have felt before—before 





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303 


so many things happened to me. Somehow we can’t 
get back, can we—and imagine? The funny part is, 
that you look as if you could be a wild one. I suppose 
it depends a good deal on home. Mine was a rotten 
imitation. Ouch!” Cora made a gesture. “Pretty 
soon we’ll be getting to the mother stuff. Don’t you 
mind me.” 

“Perhaps we’re both freaks,” suggested Jo Ellen. 
Her confession had worked no magic. A depressing 
reaction was setting in. 

“If we are, we’re different kinds. Sometimes I think 
I’ve always done about what everybody would expect. 
I’m just a plain garden variety of damn fool. You’ve 
got a way of your own. I don’t say that it’s any better 
than mine would be, but it’s yours. As for that, I 
don’t know what I’d do if I were in your position. I 
honestly don’t. I suppose I mean, if I were you , and that’s 
foolish. If I were myself I couldn’t stand it. I’d blow. ” 

“You mean, you couldn’t hate it and stand it.” 

“I couldn’t. I can’t do anything complicated. I 
don’t have to hate. But I either love or I don’t. When 
I stop loving, the jig’s up. I’m through.” 

“But-” 

“Yes, I know, there’s home coming in again. But 
I’d have to chuck home if it hurt. That’s what I did 
do. And all this time I’m envying you because you 
can face something and hold steady. I suppose that’s 
character. I haven’t any character.” 

This drew an unmerry laugh from Jo Ellen. “That 
sounds as if you thought character might be a nuisance. ” 

Cora mused. “Trying to feel two ways at once might 
be a nuisance. I can’t do anything deep. I guess I 
think with my skin—nothing inside. ” 

“I want to live—to live!” cried Jo Ellen with a color 
in her voice that caught Cora sharply. “But—maybe 
it’s that I want a lot more than you do.” 

Cora nodded. “Yes. That might be it. Sounds 




304 JO ELLEN 

pretty deep, dearie, for a kid like you. But maybe 
that’s it. ” 

Suddenly Cora looked Jo Ellen intently in the eyes. 
“Stan Lamar’s got to let you alone.” 

“He isn’t hurting me.” 

“He’s got to let you alone.” Real blood showed 
under Cora’s rouge. 

“You must be advising me .” 

“All I know is, I won’t have it. I won’t stand around 
and see—God! It makes me sick. Here you are-” 

“Please don’t worry about me,” Jo Ellen cut in. 
“Fm sick of being worried over. That seems to be my 
big trouble. I didn’t mean to start you worrying. ” 

Cora stood up. “I don’t blame you. I don’t blame 
you at all. It’s your game. But once in a while some¬ 
body on the side lines-” 

“Did I sound ungrateful?” asked Jo Ellen. She 
felt a profound need to cry. 

“I don’t know. I can’t make you out quite. Very 
likely you can’t make me out. That’s the way it goes. 
It’s a pretty dirty world, but I don’t know why I should 
butt in to persuade you of that. Looks to me as if you 
were getting some idea of how dirty it is. That wreck 
at home. That shell of a husband—forgive me, my 
dear. I’m thinking about you. I’m awfully sorry I 
had the hard luck to land on you the way I did at 
Amy Lenning’s. That was a ghastly break. And you 
were a sport. You certainly were. Hello, Nick.” 

A sleek man in tweeds had halted near them. 

“Must you run?”—Jo Ellen was saying good-by. 

XII 

Into the squirming square; wedged in the Climax 
cage and shot upward by an engineering gesture that 
reminded her of the roof; facing Eberly, who shouldn’t 
have been there, and who had buzzed without response; 
listening to a wrangle over the subtle obscurities of a 





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305 


contract and Eberly’s edged voice filing the phrases; 
hearing Shaffer for a necessary minute and noticing 
again something comic in his disenchanted wistfulness; 
following the strut of an old actor and the tactics of 
a thin girl with brick red lips; admiring and loathing 
the unearthly coolness of Aaron; typing, typing, stabbing 
the sheets; sensing with a peculiar clearness the filtered 
outdoor noises . . . Thinking that Stan was likely to 
intercept her in the foyer or not far beyond. 

But he did not intercept her. She had imagined so 
vividly the meeting that still failed to happen as to be 
strangely disconcerted. She did not admit to herself 
that she was eager. She expected to meet him, and until 
she met him she would be keyed and prepared. It was 
as if he had opened a window, or had held her up to 
look through one that was inaccessible without him. 
She had tacitly accepted his plea for a meeting that was 
not accidental. Perhaps none of the encounters, except¬ 
ing that first one, had been accidental. At an earlier 
time, when she was feeling differently, she believed him 
to have a sinister shrewdness that was capable of making 
things come about as he wanted them to come about. 
She wondered whether this conviction had been shaken, 
and if it had not been shaken why it no longer annoyed 
her. Did this mean that she had become shameless? 
Could she think at one moment that he was the kind of 
man who would bide his time, and see again and again 
that he never pressed her beyond a certain point, without 
feeling convicted when she found herself willing to go 
on? Was this restlessness blinding her to very plain 
truths about herself and about him? 

It was odd that he did not follow up that wish to 
see her very soon. She had never before given him so 
good an excuse for finding her. In that thrilling dance 
. . . What was he thinking? It would be worth every¬ 
thing to know what he was really thinking. Nothing 
that Cora Vance or anyone else might say would count 


306 


JO ELLEN 


if she could know that. Really know . . . knowing 
would be like having Fate backed against the wall. 

She agreed with herself that it was unfortunate to 
have expected him. But the next day, at noon, and 
again in the evening, something like a genuine pre¬ 
monition prompted her to await a touch upon her arm. 
The premonition was a counterfeit. 

She reached the roof in a state of tense uneasiness. 
At the door she repeated a formula she had adopted, 
which was to the effect that no matter what happened 
she would hold fast. Sometimes it seemed like the 
childish precaution of counting ten before retorting 
in anger. Yet even if it meant that she was deficient 
in some quality she ought to have, it was a safeguard. 

Marty looked dull. He did not ask her about her day. 
His interest in details of her life uptown appeared 
to have waned, yet his glance, when she came in, often 
had the effect of accusing her absence. Jo Ellen suspected 
that something unpleasant had occurred, perhaps a 
sharp interchange with his mother. 

Mrs. Simms had a headache. She emphasized her 
attitude of martyrdom by bringing out a little bottle 
with a red label, which she kept in a personal corner of 
a shelf in the pantry, and from which she extracted 
two pellets. While she dissolved them in a glass of water 
Marty picked up the bottle. 

“Poison.” 

He read it stupidly, as if he had met the word for 
the first time and were spelling it out. 

His mother snatched away the bottle. 

“You act like a fool,” she said. 

“It just seemed funny,” returned Marty, gaping at 
her. “Like you were taking-” 

“Mind your own affairs,” admonished his mother. 

Silence followed. The dinner was painfully silent. 
Marty’s father had noticed the chill when he came in 
and made one or two efforts to alleviate it. He had yet 



THE OTHER HIGH PLACE 


307 


to lose an air implying that Jo Ellen was a guest. Jo 
Ellen felt the kindliness, though it actually strengthened 
Mrs. Simms’s implication that she remained, and must 
remain, an intruder. Simms’s eyes might easily have 
been detected in their darting estimate of sore spots. 
He considered Marty and Jo Ellen. Then Jo Ellen and 
his wife. He came last to mother and son, and this 
was puzzling. To him silences were always a threat. 
He liked healthy talk, and was quickly at a loss when 
checked. The evening paper became a garrulous 
refuge. * 

Mrs. Simms, whose headache, if it survived the pellets, 
had not impaired her appetite, went about the after- 
dinner work in a bustling muteness. Under observation 
she always worked as if driven. Jo Ellen, with the 
drying-towel, followed the appointed system, which 
involved knowing the place for every dish and utensil. 
To commit no error was to avoid the chance of a rebuke 
that would make her feel like a servant who had come 
in late. $ 

The need to commit no error survived the dinner 
functions. It stretched forward into the empty evening. 
It pressed upon Jo Ellen as of a leaden yoke. She had 
an aching wish to go out, to go anywhere. But this 
was absurd for one who had just come in. The quiet 
of an evening should have been a solace to one who had 
experienced the scramble of a working day. This 
quiet was piercing, full of eyes and ears. The crackling 
of Simms’s newspaper was thunderous. . . . Simms 
she was sure of. Things he said outside of the rooms, 
in his office on a lower floor, in the foyer, once when he 
walked with her to the station, all gathered to an under¬ 
standing that was the more of a support because he 
was content simply to let her feel his affection. While 
he was there the others were especially guarded. 

When he went away Jo Ellen found a different quality 
in Mrs. Simms’s silence. It seemed to erect menacing 


308 


JO ELLEN 


tentacles. Jo Ellen could hear her breathe and give 
forth a rasping, accusatory sigh. Marty twisted in his 
chair as if to detach himself from a thrall. The inanity 
of a question would indicate that he could no longer 
resist an impulse to be released. Any question served 
the purpose. Jo Ellen would be tempted to deny to 
herself that she was sulking or accepting any complicity 
in the excruciating stupidity of the effect. She would 
start telling Marty about something that had happened, 
something not involving debatable contacts. Despite 
his apparent eagerness for diversion, his attention was 
imperfect. His eyes appeared to glaze. He had no 
real interest in the things she brought up. He could 
kindle at something shocking in the new r s, but unless 
his father happened to be present he betrayed signs 
of remembering his mother. 

On this night she thought that his eyes had a peculiar 
desperation. Perhaps it was a fancy. She often chal¬ 
lenged her own imaginings. She frequently discovered 
that wdien she had completed a miserable picture of his 
thoughts he was thinking about nothing at all. 

Suddenly he came out with — 

“Have you ever seen anything more of-” 

And he stopped short. 

His mother looked up. Jo Ellen knew the name he 
had almost blundered into using. 

“Well,” said his mother. “What’s the idea?” 
Marty’s face contorted. “You know who I mean— 
the—the actor fellow. ” 

The lie seemed to be nailed by Mrs. Simms. 

“What do you think you’re asking? The actor 
fellow. I think you’re losing your mind. What other 
kind do you think she meets?” 

“That ain’t so,” protested Marty. “She sees all 
kinds of people. Millions of them. You know the one 
I mean—” He was bent on getting past the lie. “That 




THE OTHER HIGH PLACE 


309 


Jo Ellen made a writhing attempt to help him. “You 
mean Cannerton?” 

“ That’s the one! ” 

“I haven’t seen him lately.” 

This was another lie, if the name were to be translated. 
Mrs. Simms was alert for the effect. But there w T as no 
very good handle for a criticism. 

Jo Ellen slid into an abvss of hypocritical misery. 
It was calamitous that he should have happened to 
think of Stan. 

“I don’t see how those mountebanks live,” remarked 
Mrs. Simms. 

“You mean actors?” asked Marty. 

“The whole scandalous lot.” 

“Well,” Marty added vaguely, “they got to live.” 

“Have they? I don’t see it. Anyway, we don’t 
have to talk about them—or mix with them. ” 

“Jo Ellen has to, if it’s her business.” 

“A dirty business.” 

Marty jerked about in his chair. He took on the look 
of struggling under a seizure. The red fury in his face 
reached a crisis that was expressed at last in four words 
that were hysterically accented. 

“Always picking on her!” 

Mrs. Simms dropped her hands and stared. There 
was a new glint in her fixed, pinioning glance, an in¬ 
credulous and astonished anger. 

“That’ll do for you,” she said. “That’ll be all— all .” 

“You are!” shouted Marty. 

“Shut up!” His mother’s voice cracked. “I don’t want 
anything more out of you. You! What have you to say? ” 
An unspoken resentment seemed to blaze up in her. “ You! 
What good are you? Sitting there telling me-” 

Jo Ellen’s hand made an involuntary gesture of protest. 

Mrs. Simms did not miss the sign. 

“And I’ll have nothing from you either, Miss Smarty. 
Not a word. ” 



310 


JO ELLEN 


“I haven’t said a word,” Jo Ellen flung out. 

“Keep it up. I don’t want any words. We had no 
trouble in this house until you butted in.” 

“She’s my wife!” screamed Marty. 

“Yes!” Mrs. Simms struck the table with her veined 
fist. “Yes! Fool! What did you marry for? Marry! 
Good God!” 

Jo Ellen walked out of the room. The two others, 
glaring impotently at each other, and Marty stammering 
for more words, gave her a sickening apprehension of 
the deeper trouble. 

She was separating mother and son. 

At the window, her face close to the glass, she peered 
into the cool darkness and shivered. There was the 
bleak beauty of the stars, and across the shoulders of 
neighboring towers she could see the lamp of Liberty. 

xm 

The note from Stan Lamar was not on her desk when 
she reached the office in the morning. It came into 
Aaron’s hands in one of the intervals before noon, and 
thus found its way. Would she, when she came back 
from lunch, stop in at room 506 on the fifth floor. This 
was the sum of it, with an “S.L. ” to finish. After lunch. 
There must be a special meaning in this. But special 
meanings were negligible at the moment. 

So was the firm name on office 506. Enough that it 
was 506, and something not like anything else was to 
happen. 

At the click of the door he came out of the inner 
office. They were alone. She listened indifferently to 
the explanation. His friend Massinger and the partner 
had gone into the West. The place would be closed 
until the end of the month. He had the key. She 
regarded with more interest his knowing why Eberly 
would be away until after four. Their meeting was 
subject to no observation such as must be possible in 


THE OTHER HIGH PLACE 


311 


a restaurant, for example. The need to be unobserved 
was made plain later on. Everything was made plain 
later on . . . not by any blunt recital of detail. The 
bearings of this and that came as part of a slanting 
revelation that had a kind of phantasmal wonder, 
implying a huge, daring readjustment of the world. 

There w^as a leather-covered sofa upon which they 
sat presently. On the wall opposite was a wide picture 
of a terrace, with white-draped figures and a profusion 
of flowers. Perhaps the round thing at the back was 
the turret of a castle. No particular meaning attached 
itself to the picture. It was simply the object that hung 
where it became part of any thinking that happened 
on the other side of the room. At one moment it was 
strangely clear. At others, it swam grotesquely, or 
receded into an opalescent haze through which red 
lightnings flickered. 

He was holding her hand while he spoke about his 
approaching journey. The touch appeared to loosen 
the tightness of everything. A tingle in her face was 
reminiscent of the liquor at Amy Lennings . . . and 
of the dance. These sensations seemed to envelop her. 
Although his shoulder was against hers, he was not so 
near, so real as something within her that quivered like 
a thread of flame, an exquisitely confusing fiery whisper. 

She knew what he was going to say. She did not know 
how he was going to say it, nor how she would feel when 
she had actually heard it. She was letting the words 
come. She wanted to know how she would feel when 
she heard the ultimate call. She wanted to listen, 
shamelessly; to let the flood of all that was outside rush 
into the prison of herself. She had been able to imagine 
a great variety of things about him. When she tried 
to imagine things about herself she had no sureness. 
To herself she seemed to be fearfully obscure, a kind of 
quaking tangle, not to be understood; full of desperate 
wishes that quarreled with one another. As for feeling 


312 


JO ELLEN 


depraved, that belonged with what she was doing. 
She recalled moments on the roof when she had felt 
that only some crime could make her feel comfortable. . . . 

He was talking about the roof now. “I haven’t 
said a word,” he went on, “about—about what has been 
happening to you. But I know. That’s a nasty part 
of it—it isn’t any secret. It can’t be covered up. Talked 
about—in the family. A rotten position to put you in— 
my aunt taking it out on you. You! It isn’t fair. 
Why should you die on a job like that? And that’s 
the way it would be. Pounding at you—beating you 
down— getting you. You’ve a right to live. Just because 
luck hit Marty hard, why should you be knocked out? 
It ^wasn’t your fault. You’ve played square as long as 
anybody could. You can’t do any more except—I 
know what I’m saying—except make things worse. 
Honest to God, you re in the way!" 

He tightened his grip on her fingers. 

“That sounds pretty bad. I mean it. You’re being 
trampled on. If you went back home—uptown—what 
would you be? All hands would call you a quitter. They 
would. And you’ve got to quit or be squeezed dry— 
smashed altogether. If you could quit and live! -” 

He turned to grasp her arms, and to talk with his 
face very close. 

“Jo Ellen, there’s only one way. I love you. If I 
could prove that, I’d be proving a lot more at the same 
time. If I could take you away, a long ways off, where 
everything would be different, where we’d both have 
a chance to get started right—I can see that—our 
being together—getting life right ——” 

She did not answer him. She was seeing the picture 
on the wall opposite, and how it blurred. 

He had it figured out that when they came back— 
in their own good time—there would be the great 
adjustment. Somehow they would be married. By 
then he would have proved himself, proved his right to 





THE OTHER HIGH PLACE 


313 


stride beside her. There would be the shock when she 
went away. He acknowledged this. But even her people 
would remember what she was leaving behind. They 
would remember that she was shaking off something 
impossible and that she was away in the open, living a 
wonderful adventure. 

When she straightened as if threatening to rise, he 
put his arms about her. 

“They’d know you went because you had to get 
away,” he said, with a quickened pace. “They’d 
see that it was the short cut—that you had the courage 
to break a chain that never ought to have been fastened 
on you—that you broke it in the quick way that saves 
all the family argument—like a girl eloping because 
she was frightened about a fussy wedding. And I'd 
be the happiest man on the top of the earth—happier 
than I’ve ever had a chance to be. I think I know 
how to make you happy. ’’ 

She stirred at this. He was eager to interrupt the 
thought he surmised. 

“I have a failure against me. I know that. Cor 
and I just couldn’t make a go of it. I hope you won't 
let that mean too much. Maybe a man might learn 
a lot from a failure. I’m not like I was. I want to 
prove that you've been—yes, an inspiration, the great 
big idea that makes a man want to be his best. I see 
just what I’m going to do.’’ 

“You have it all thought out,” Jo Ellen said, with an 
inflection that mystified him for a moment. 

“Thought out—yes. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. 
You wouldn’t blame me for doing a lot of planning. I 
wouldn’t have a right to say a word to you—not this 
word—unless I had. I’d have to be able to tell you the 
how of it—how w’e could slip away. Listen to this ...” 

The plan was, indeed, elaborately thought out; how 
she was to resign at Eberly’s, telling them she had been 
married for months—which would stop all that argument 


314 


JO ELLEN 


—but leaving the roof on the intervening days at her 
usual hour in the morning; how the ship affair was already 
being arranged—no, not definitely, of course, but so that 
nothing should confuse him or introduce any awkwardness 
whatever—a ship stopping in the West Indies—and then 
making the splendid long reach. . . . The voyage would 
be a dream. And then . . . South America . . . 

His arms tightened until she was drawn with head 
thrown back. His lips burned again and again . . . 
until she struggled free. 

She stood at the window looking down, at the changed 
fifth-floor angle, into the turmoil of the street. He 
stood behind her, a shoulder against the frame of the 
window, hands at her waist, and pleaded for a word 
that would tell him he might let a gorgeous dream go 
on unfolding as a reality. She abandoned her mind for 
a long moment to that word reality, to the fearful 
vividness of the new meaning that burst into the syllables 
... as if her wish for a real world had been an aston¬ 
ishingly blind thing that could be frightened stiff by an 
answer. She wondered why she didn’t know what she 
would do; why she hadn’t flung out, instantly, an honest 
No! She wondered why she couldn’t speak at all, why 
two kinds of speech wedged in her throat, as if there 
were two of her strangling each other. It was idiotic to 
be speechless. He could go on building anything he 
liked in such a silence, and she herself w T as, perhaps, 
in some way being engulfed by it. 

“I’m not lying,” she said at last. 

“Lying . . . ?” After the silence this was amazingly 
obscure. He looked at her with a puzzled eagerness. 

“I mean that I’m not letting you go on and—and 
pretending. I can’t tell you what I—no, I can’t. There’s 
no use telling you what I’ve been feeling. You think 
you guess a lot of it. Maybe you do. I’ve let you say 
something because—well, I will have to get away— 
when the minute comes—when I-” 



THE OTHER HIGH PLACE 


315 


“Before they smash you.” 

“And I’ve let you go on because I want to get away. 
I could go back to In wood. That might seem like 
getting away, after I had gone. I don’t know. It seems 
now as if it wouldn’t—as if it was Inwood I was afraid 
of. I suppose I’m just a coward-” 

“Qno!” 

“Another girl might stick it out without whining. 
Another girl might not be hated so much. That would 
help—or not have home people loving her so much, 
and that would make it simpler, too—can’t you see that? ” 

He could see arguments racing back and forth, and 
this was painful. There should be the one dominating 
thing that would brush these away. If you began 
arguing . . . 

“Let love decide all that,” he said. “The great 
thing-” 

She turned to look into his face, very steadily. He 
met the look without speaking. The sheen of her eyes 
was enormously disturbing. He gathered her close, 
until their faces were but a hand’s width apart. 

“I’ll tell you on Monday,” she said. 

He repeated, “On Monday.” 

“I mean. I’ll write Yes, if I decide Yes—you’ll know 
all that would mean. If I decide No, I don’t want to 
write it. If you don’t hear, you’d better forget me.” 

He made a movement of protest. “I never could do 
that. ” 

“If—if I decide that I cant —you understand—that 
I cant you’ll have to let me go on thinking that.” 

“If I don’t get any word-” 

“That’ll be the end of it—the very end. You’ll 
be off to South America to make your fortune.” 

“But you’ll come in to-morrow afternoon?” This 
would be Saturday. 

“No.” She was firm. “I must have a little time. 
That’s little enough.” 





316 


JO ELLEN 


She released herself, and he drew up with her as she 
turned toward the door. 

“I’ll be counting the hours, and loving you all the 
time. Send me a little note—the hour, you know— 
I’ll be here at the stroke of the clock you set. ” 

He thought to kiss her again. He felt surest about 
her when their lips were together. But her way of moving 
forbade him. That great thing he had spoken of was 
fragile. And mysterious. If she hadn’t been the greatest 
mystery he ever met, he ■would not have been standing 
there watching her take hold of the knob of the door. 

With her back toward him, she might have been ad¬ 
dressing the door in that murmured last speech. 

“I’ll know, when I can think it out.” 

Then she swung round with a startling effect of 
defiance, as if she were hurling some retort at him. 

“And I promise you that for once in my life I’m going 
to do exactly what I want to do. Good-by!” 

Taken by itself this could mean anything. Lamar, 
standing with eyes on the closed door, decided, quite 
naturally, that the meaning narrow r ed, for him, to a 
Yes or No, with Yes swaggering. He lighted a ciga¬ 
rette and picked up his hat. 

XIV 

To Jo Ellen the question w^as a reptile wriggling in 
her bosom. Defiance could be simple; decision grew 
no simpler. At one moment doing nothing appeared to 
be simplest of all. At another, doing nothing—enduring 
—wore the visage of the one impossible thing. 

Ironically, Saturday w r as a blankness. It provoked 
no decisions. Marty was anything you chose to think. 
Mrs. Simms had the effect of refusing to fortify any 
impulse. There was almost a softness in her manner at 
certain times, and in Mrs. Simms anything that might 
be construed as gentle was sensationally noticeable. 
Jo Ellen had an interval in which she asked herself 


THE OTHER HIGH PLACE 


317 


whether she had invented a crisis, whether her misery 
was not imagined, whether all of her obstacles were not 
built by an ugly wish to give herself to Stan Lamar. 

When she was alone w T ith Marty in their room she saw 
that his blight had a changed cast. The struggle with 
his mother had left a new mark. He w T as restless. Doing 
nothing was complicated for him by an effect of being 
freshly shut in; as if there were fewer directions in which 
he could look. His look toward Jo Ellen was less chal¬ 
lenging. The glance, when it rested, w r as not pleasant; 
she fancied even a kind of malignance. But it w 7 as too 
tired to be aggressive. He no longer seemed willing to 
stir up. In finding an excuse for touching her, he appeared 
to be hopelessly verifying the truth of her, without blame. 
This was pitiful. It had ways of being terrifying as well 
as accusatory. How could you chuck the helpless? . . . 
He should not have been helpless. She recalled how he 
had shown the strength of his arms and shoulders by 
repeatedly lifting himself free of the chair, with legs 
dangling. . . . Yes, it w r as his soul that was most pro¬ 
foundly crippled. It wnuld be a soul you were chucking. 
What then? If it were ordained, this might have to 
happen. There was a theory that God chucked souls 
when they failed—when nothing else could be done with 
them. An ugly idea. God had a right, perhaps. But 
no one else could want to do that. . . . 

The bells of Trinity on Sunday morning brought this 
back into her mind. It was a huge and bewildering 
thought, hard to get hold of. 

While the bells clanged, w r ord came that Mrs. Simms’s 
sister, who had been ill, was very much w 7 orse. Mrs. 
Simms was to go up to the Bronx in the afternoon. 
Marty's father would join her there, after meeting some 
obligation that carried him away immediately after the 
noon meal. These plans implied that Jo Ellen and Marty 
would have supper together . . . alone on the roof, alone 
for the first time, as it happened, on the other high place. 


318 


JO ELLEN 


Mrs. Simms appeared to be much annoyed by having 
to go to her sister. They had never been friends. There 
was something unexplained in the matter of the man 
the sister had married. Mrs. Simms’s face at the dinner 
table bore signs of a freshly aroused bitterness. Jo 
Ellen ascribed this to solicitude for the sister. It was 
after Simms had gone that Jo Ellen’s effort to express 
sympathy was met by an acrid rebuff. Marty wheeled 
himself to a window and was silent for a time. He 
could hear his mother’s voice in the kitchen and some 
low-toned remark by Jo Ellen. When the clicking 
of the dishes had ceased, Jo Ellen came into the living 
room. He turned to her blankly. It occurred to her 
that his features looked peculiarly senseless. Something 
behind them appeared to be loosened when he saw 
his mother moving toward her room in preparation for 
going out. 

“Why do you hate Aunt Abbie?” 

This came without color or emphasis, like a thought 
idly picked up by a wireless receiver. 

It served to stop Mrs. Simms sharply. Her heavy 
eyebrows drew together in an astounded stare. 

“What do you mean, hate her? What-” 

“You always-” 

“Shut that mouth of yours! Talking like a fool 
again. ” 

“You do hate her! You know you do! I’ve heard 


His mother came close to his chair in a bristling 
fury. 

“You drunken sot! It wasn’t enough to bring this 
on yourself—to land your useless hulk on us. You 
have to fill your lazy hide with liquor and yap like a 
blackguard to your own mother. I ought to slap your 
jaw. That’s-” 

“Go on! Do it!” Marty’s voice arose hysterically. 
“Slap your sot of a son! Get all the hate out of you!” 






THE OTHER HIGH PLACE 


319 


At the moment when she feared the blow might fall, 
Jo Ellen touched Mrs. Simms’s arm. 

“ Please don’t-” 

‘‘You red-headed brat!” and Jo Ellen received a 
slanting thrust. “Keep out of this, I tell you, or-” 

Jo Ellen seized a wrist. “ You mustn’t do that to me. ” 

“I mustn’t, eh?” The blow of the free hand caught 
Jo Ellen in the face. “That’ll teach-” 

Marty was shouting something as Jo Ellen pinned his 
mother’s arms. He maneuvered with the wheels of his 
chair as if to intercede. The two figures became fixed, 
face to face. At a writhing threat from the older woman, 
Jo Ellen shook her until there was a click of teeth, until 
the glare that answered had passed its paroxysm and 
came to a conquered pause. There may have been a glint 
of awe in the fury. Jo Ellen felt the limpness coming 
under her hands. 

She drew away. 

“You’re not my mother. Maybe you forgot that.” 

“You devil!” muttered Mrs. Simms. 

Jo Ellen went for her hat. 

“I’ll be back,” she said to Marty. . . . 

xv 

On Broadway. She turned first toward the Battery. 
To be anywhere until the angry woman had time to leave. 
No, she did not want the Battery and the ships. She 
retraced her steps and entered Trinity churchyard. 
The sun shone, but there was a raw wind. ... A last 
resting place. Still “sacred” after so many years. 
Strange stones, the flesh of them peeling as if to leave 
only their bones; broken, so that sometimes you knew 
when he departed this life but not who he was; a sunken 
fragment that seemed to threaten the burying of the 
record with the body. . . . Here lyes ye body—that was 
very far back. Here lyes the body—here lyeth—here 
lies . . . John Sharde, Commander of His Britannic 





320 


JO ELLEN 


Majesty’s Packet . . . Eliza, Widow of Alexander 
Hamilton. ... It made no difference to any of them 
that the sun shone or that the wind was raw. . . . 
“Beloved wife.” Wonderful words! Many had been 
beloved. And all were dead. 

Beloved wife. ... It would be a great thing . . . 

She should have worn a wrap. The living could feel 
the wind. And her eyes pained her. It was safe, 
doubtless, to go back. 

Marty sprawled in his chair. He did not lift his head 
as she came in, nor stir while he said thickly, “She’s 
gone. ” 

As Jo Ellen came out of the bedroom she saw that he 
was leaning forward in the chair. 

“You stood up for me,” he said in the same thick 
way, “stood up for me—but you were—you were 
disgusted, isn’t that so?” 

“ I was sorrv. ” 

- 

“Disgusted with me. I know. She’s disgusted with 
me. You’re disgusted with me. That’s it. I’m— 
what was it?—a drunken sot. So I had another drink. 
If anybody calls you names, give them something to 
call you names about.” 

“But I didn’t call you names.” 

“No. Maybe you don’t, Jo Ellen. But you do a 
hell of a lot of thinking. I can—yes, I can— feel 
the names you don’t rip out. You think-” 

“Don’t let us talk about names. Let us stop thinking 
for a little while.” 

“Stop-? Say, how can anybody do that?” 

Nevertheless she averted a discussion. Presently 
he fell asleep. Evidently this dull pain was a headache. 
Learning new pains was part of the game of living. If 
she could get to sleep perhaps the ache would leave 
her. But she could not sleep. The afternoon had a 
fearful length, and the ache stretched through it. 

She began sooner than was necessary to arrange the 





THE OTHER HIGH PLACE 


321 


supper, puttering absently with the details, and avoiding 
noises. There could be many reasons for not waking a 
husband. Perhaps even beloved wives had been known 
to have more than an unselfish reason. At the last, 
when they were past the twilight, she dropped a pan, 
and she heard the creak of the wdieels that told her he 
w T as stirring. . . . 

Supper. He began to eat without noticing her. She 
w r ondered how he could be ravenous. 

“What’s the matter? Ain’t you hungry?” He had 
become aware of the pretenses. 

“I don’t feel very well.” 

“Shaking her. That’s wdiat did for you.” His 
mouth opened and a look of reminiscence fixed him. 
Suddenly he crouched forward. “She does hate Aunt 
Abbie. ” 

He shot this out with a kind of insane intensity. 

“We'd better not go into hating, ” Jo Ellen said slowly. 

“She does. She’s begun to hate me. It wasn’t that 
way before. It’s since-” 

He stopped stupidly. 

“Since you were hurt.” 

“Hurt?” His face contorted. “No. We can say it 
plain. Since I was married. What’s the use of dodging 
it? Since I was married. Since she began hating you 
and you began hating her. Hating. Everything’s 
hating. If you two could’ve got along together . . .” 

This would have to go on . . . and she w r ould have 
to listen. . . . She couldn’t let it go on. There was no 
way of stopping the grind of the words. But she could 
go away. If she stayed—stayed whthin the reach of it— 
anywhere but beyond the horizon—her head would go 
wrong, her eyes would get to look like his. . . . 

His eyes followed her when she went into the kitchen. 
She felt rather than saw his excitement wdien he came 
for a moment to the door. Afterward, while she rather 
blindly fumbled with the dishes, she fancied, w T ith nothing 



322 


JO ELLEN 


to aid the surmise, that he had gone to his liquor, wherever 
it was. Perhaps the sickened feeling would lift if she 
could write the line to Stan Lamar. 

She found paper and an envelope. There was a 
stamp in her purse. Marty was not in the living room 
when she sought the handbag. 

She would go out to drop the letter in the mail chute 
at the very last. Delaying it seemed like an assurance 
that she had not hurried the step, that the thinking out 
had demanded the utmost of time. She slipped the 
letter under her blouse. 

There was a numb silence through which a drip in the 
kitchen sounded piercingly. She went to the sink and 
tightened the offending tap. Only the sound of the 
blood in her temples remained. 

If she could find Mrs. Simms’s pellets. . . . Here they 
were. But how many should be taken? She sat beside the 
table looking at the bottle with the red marks. People had 
different sorts of headache. Perhaps there were no pellets 
for her kind. With arms upon the table her head drooped. 

She heard him coming. She refused to move. No, 
she would not go on. Not a syllable. The wheels 
stopped at the threshold. Then the crash through. 

“O my God!” 

She lifted her head, and saw his lips working. 

“Have you taken it?” he screamed. 

“No, no!” She made a weary gesture. 

“I thought-” He was gazing at the bottle, as 

if reading the largest red word. 

“My head aches-” she began. 

He snatched up the bottle and emptied the white 
heap of pellets into his palm. 

She could reach the hand that held the bottle. The 
other hand eluded her. 

“I got a headache!” His voice broke in a shriek. 

Her leap and a sharp blow spilled the white heap. 
The little pills pattered on the floor. 




THE OTHER HIGH PLACE 


323 


Go on!”—he was sobbing with a strangled hoarseness 
—“go on! Say it! Call me a drunken sot! O my 
God! Why didn’t you let me take it? A mouthful. 
Then you’d-” 

He spun the chair and rolled out through the doorway. 
She could hear his throat noises trailing as he moved. 
Her own sob vented an exhausted compassion. . . . 

A sound that comes back to the brain some moments 
after it has happened, or perhaps a curiosity kindled 
by her compassion, set her to listening intently. What 
was he doing? 

The living room, the bedrooms, the passage to the 
roof door . . . The roof door was open. She knew this 
first by the chill of the wind. . . . Wide open. 

A blade of light showed the wheel chair at the coping. 

“Marty!” 

She called as she ran. She knew while she called that 
the wheel chair was empty. And out of the dark arose 
something that was not a sound ... an appalling 
emanation, as if those spaces below were making clamor 
of a thing for which they had no sound, yet which was 
rising, rising to the stars. 

She clutched the coping for a moment ... No, 
she could not do that. She could not look down, even 
into a dimness that would show her nothing. She 
could run with a frantic straightness, through the rooms, 
overturning a chair, then freeze at the sound of the apart¬ 
ment bell. It was incredibly soon. There had been 
but a few seconds . . . 

Arnold Pearson. She shrank against the wall opposite 
the door when she had flung it open. 

He didn’t know. You could see by his face that he 
didn’t know. 

“Marty ...” She pointed. “From the roof.” 

He uttered a cry, an unintelligible question, as he 
leaped past her. She stood, her back to the wall, until 
he returned from the roof. 



JO ELLEN 


321 


“Stay here,” he commanded. 

She would stay, stay and listen, walking back and forth 
for frightful minutes, listening as if voices in the street 
could rise so high. Soundless voices came, whispering 
that she was free. Free. That w r as one of the meanings 
of this thing, which in a flash . . . She might have 
prevented it. She was the only one there to prevent 
it, and she hadn't. If she had guessed . . . But who 
could have guessed? Marty! The boy w r ho had sat 
beside her on the high place . . . And she was free. 

A deep boom came from the river. Ships. Her hand 
went to her breast. The letter. She took it out. Each 
minutest incident of Stan Lamar rushed through her 
brain with an extraordinary sw T iftness and clearness: 
the tingle of his hand in the empty house, the warm 
pressure of him under the dock, the dance, his kisses, 
the cautious voice, the shrewd powerfulness that belonged 
to a kind of man not at all like Marty. He had taught her 
about herself . . . fearfully. He had shown her a way 
to be free. And now she was free without him. He was 
to have opened for her a dreadful imprisoning door. 
Now, suddenly, terrifically, the door stood ajar, without 
his hand. Suddenly she saw him as he w^as . . . She 
saw herself as she was, with the world widened again, 
the world that had been tight, that had seemed to have 
no one to loosen it but Stan . . . Stan, with whom she 
had shut her eyes. Now her eyes could be open. She 
could look straight ... at everything. She could see 
that he would have meant escape rather than liberty. 
Perhaps it had often been this w r ay with women, w T hen 
people talked about the lure of the flesh . . . There had 
been the lure of the flesh. No use lying about that. But 
passion wanted its liberty with the right one, with one 
to whom you could give infinite trust. Looking out from 
a prison the utterly right one didn’t seem to matter so 
much. Now r , in the crashing reality of this change, she 
knew that Stan receded. The shadows that had always 


THE OTHER HIGH PLACE 


325 


hovered behind him seemed to be swallowing his image. 
A lightning flash was helping to show what happened. 
He was no longer the other one. He stood alone . . . 
And alone he was only Stan Lamar, the truth about 
whom she had never wanted herself to know. Not know¬ 
ing had been part of the thrill, that thrill as of a man, 
nameless, mysterious, who should come out of the dark. 
Wondering how much of a crook he was belonged with 
the rebel feeling. Now, when she was free . . . 

Real voices. She stole close to the outer door once more. 

“He knew which side would mean a finish . . . Until 
the old folks come home. ” 

It was the night man. She walked unsteadily away. 

Arnold Pearson saw her standing in the middle of the 
place, with a stony straightness. She was tearing into 
small fragments some white paper that dropped at her 
feet like the flakes of a first snow. He did not know why 
she peered at the litter on the floor. He did not know 
what the white fragments were spelling for her—through 
a crimson haze. 

“Poor Marty!” She saw him gulp, and that there 
were wet streaks on his face. He had been to the street. 
It would be what he had seen that made him look at her 
this way—at her, the other one who was freed. 

He came to her. She would not take the chair. He 
might be thinking that she would crumple. She could 
speak to him. She could let the torrent of the story 
gush out. If she could tell him everything her head 
might stop cracking. Everything. 

He would be there when Mrs. Simms came back. 


TIIE END 



* 





*t. v 










OCT 3 1923 



























































